The House of Lords, God love them, defeated a proposal to extend to six weeks the state’s power arbitrarily to detain suspects:
The amendment [to eliminate extended detainment] was put forward by Lord Dear, a former West Midlands chief constable, who told peers: “This attempt to appear tough on terrorism is a shabby charade which is unworthy of a democratic.
“This legislation is fatally flawed, is ill thought through and is unnecessary. Perhaps worst of all, it seeks to further erode the fundamental legal and civil rights that have been the pride of this country for centuries.”
John Bull has a lesson to teach Uncle Sam. In the U.S., you can even call that kind of provision “unconstitutional.”