Melanchthon: And on to Control Orders

With Parliament asserting itself on votes for prisoners, there must now either be reform of the European Convention on Human Rights, the European Court's interpretation thereof, or of Britain's relationship to the Convention.

But isn't this an opportunity to get the Lib Dems on side, to help with another big ECHR-related issue before us: Control Orders?  Lib Dems and Conservative backbenchers were mustard-keen to get rid of Control Orders.  But it was impossible to do so without revising our relationship to the European Convention or the Convention itself (as I've explained before).

However, if we are now forced to revise our relationship to the Convention by the votes for prisoners issue, why don't we deal with the Control Orders issue at the same time - thereby securing many Lib Dems as allies?  Surely it is just as intolerable that the European Convention insists (de facto) that we must have procedures whereby Britons are subject to house arrest without trial or open accusation as that the European Convention insists that we must permit prisoners to vote?