It was reeking of partisan positioning — everything Tory is wrong — and trying to defend a heavy handedness and confusing “conspiring to commit misconduct in a public office” with Official Secrets Act.

And why is it not in the public interest to know the Home Secretary’s Opinion (who is ultimately responsible for law and order in the UK) on crime?

And police going in and searching an MP’s office in the houses of Parliament is not good for our democracy. Our whole system of democracy is based on the premise that Parliament is supreme.

And I also find it bizzare like many others here that the Government is claiming no knowledge prior to the fact. But in their defence I don’t think the Labour Ministers are that stupid to sanction this.

May be it was Ian Blair fiasco in his last day as Commissioner..”yeah I got a MP’s office searched by anti-terror officers in my last day who is Tory front bench” . You can put nothing past Sir Ian.

You also have to wonder about the Speaker’s backbone…

Good points C Chandra@16

It is always difficult to comment on stories when there is so little information available, but it is interesting how the reaction from the Conservatives seems to be “how dare you arrest him- he is an MP. Aren’t they supposed to be above the law? He’s one of us.”

Yep, agree on both counts. There seems to be a little bit of a phycological impact with this.

Well, if he turns out to have been arrested for merely passing on suppressed information, that is bad. But I will wait and see.

I believe there are just as many, authoritarians in the current day Labour party than current day Tory party, especially if policy announcements are anything to go by.

I applaud the so far principled comments here, not sniping partisanship that’s all too often par for the course on politco blogs.

I’m also very puzzled how the government can claim that Brown didn’t know, either the met is totally ignoring the home secretary, the home secretary is ignoring the prime minister or the government is lying; either way something doesn’t add up. If Boris Johnson was informed as apparently was David Cameron, why not Jacqui Smith?

Sad, I know.

But there must be a huge number of people that haven’t a fucking clue what “conspiring to commit misconduct in a public office,” actually means. And it looks to me that no statement is about to be forthcoming.

It is interesting the timing of this though. This week it’s begun to look like the Tories were getting their act together regarding attacking the government and this will derail that. Ever since Peter Mandleson has returned they’ve not been having the best time have they…?

The mind boggles:

“conspiring to commit misconduct in a public office,”

I seem to remember, a long time ago when Post Office Regulations were quite strict on that sort of thing.

I thought John Major and Edwina Currie had moved us, well them anyway, away from that sort of innuendo.

What has he done?