Once again, the Tories are batting on the wong wicket. The Home Secretary Charles Clarke has decided that the law that permits a houeholder to use reasonable force when accosting an intruder into his home should not be changed. As the Telegraph reports, he thinks the problem is rather that people don't understand that the law is already weighted in favour of the householder, and need to be made more aware that this is so. This rightly repudiates the proposal put forward by the Tory MP Patrick Mercer which amounts to permission to use unreasonable force, with the householder only challenged if it is 'grossly unreasonable'. For reasons set out in my previous post on this matter, I think Mercer's proposal is utterly dangerous and unncessary and will create a gun culture and trigger-happy householders in which innocent people will get hurt and murder will effectively be redefined.

On the Today programme this morning, however, the Tory leader Michael Howard criticised Clarke's decision. Howard seems to thinks he is standing up for law and order. Actually, he is merely riding the tiger of popular prejudice, which appears to think (see the Tony Martin case) that it's perfectly ok to shoot a fleeing burglar in the back.

The Tories have therefore positioned themselves on the side of mob rule and against the rule of law. This brilliant repositioning of modern Conservatism is all of a piece with their slowness to oppose all-night drinking and the proposed gambling free-for-all, their silence (as far as I know) on the Bezhti and Jerry Springer controversies, and so on. In other words, in addition to opportunism, strategic failure and a collapse into internal recrimination, they are continuing to give the unmistakeable impression that they are not just on the wrong side of the culture wars -- they don't even realise that they are going on.