New Labour. New Britain ; How They Changed Our Nation, by Deborah Orr ++ A Decade Ago, Labour Swept to Power Pledging to Rebuild the Trust between the State and Its Citizens. So Why Are Our Basic Freedoms under Assault as Never before? in the First of a Series of Articles to Mark the 10th Anniversary of Tony Blair's Historic Landslide, Deborah Orr Argues That We Have Lost Far More Than We Realise

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We can't say we weren't warned, again and again. We were warned with such regularity that some of the names of some of the mavens passed into the language. Kafka warned us. Orwell warned us. Foucault warned us, and while he was warning us, he took the opportunity to point out just how long the writing had been on the wall. Here is the late French philosopher, writing in Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, in 1975.

"Inspection functions ceaselessly. The gaze is alert everywhere: 'A considerable body of militia, commanded by good officers and men of substance', guards at the gates, at the town hall and in every quarter to ensure the prompt obedience of the …