The Last Ditch by Tom Paine

Link: CNN.com – Blair wife quizzed on pretend slap – Sep 17, 2006.

A shopkeeper makes a citizen’s arrest of a thief on a Saturday afternoon. She calls the police and they say the earliest they can attend to take a statement is next Wednesday. “What shall I do with him?” she asks. “You must let him go” says the policeman on the phone. True story, as told to my wife by the shopkeeper in our home city, a Labour stronghold in the North.

A social worker calls the police in Scotland and several officers high tail it across town to interview Cherie Blair. It would be funny that she should have fallen victim to the busybody culture that is at the heart of New Labour, were it not for the fact that had it been you or me, it would not have been so easily laughed off.