The border force announced by Brown does not include the police. The Tories have attacked the proposal as "toothless" and the Liberal Democrats disparaged it as "border force lite". The new uniformed presence is designed to be a more efficient use of existing resources, lifting a Tory policy proposal without actually dealing with the problem. Brown at work!
More worrying is the proposal that the Telegraph has picked up. Under the guise of counter-terrorism, the government would harmonise our criminal justice system with the Continent's, circumscribe jury participation further and increase the potential for miscarriages of justice.
A radical option put forward in a Home Office paper would involve scrapping the centuries-old system of British law and introducing a Continental-style approach involving examining magistrates.
The Government said: ''It would require a major shift in the way in which cases are investigated and in the adversarial system of prosecution used in this country. But given the scale of the challenge we face, we believe it is right to consider this option alongside others.''
There is no doubt that Europhile officials would work to further align our subordination to the European Union's and ditch all of the common law if this would further their goal. No doubt this will be law by 2009.