So there you have it. MPs have voted in favour of holding some inquests in secret, after a string of heavily spun ‘concessions’ from the government. This is either another nail in the coffin of a free society or a matter of supreme indifference to all but a self-selecting cadre of complacent metropolitan liberals. Let me know which you think it is in the comment box below, if you feel so inclined.

As you might expect, I belong in the former camp. One cannot help but bridle at the extraordinary arrogance and complacency of Jack Straw’s pleas of mitigation, if I can put it that way. ‘These proposals are a million miles from where they started,’ he told MPs today. If that’s true – and it’s at the very least debatable – one can only ask why they were ever put in the original Counter Terrorism Bill in the first place. Who’s advising him?

We were also impressed by his assertion that ‘no sane secretary of state would use the law for trivial reasons’. Really? Not even to arrest an octogenarian heckler at the Labour Party conference, secretary of state?

For less polemic and more reasoned analysis, read Joshua Rozenberg’s column on the subject of ‘certified’ inquests in this week’s Gazette, published on Thursday.