IF the war on terror is going to last for a generation, we had better take care not to throw away any more of our hard-won civil rights than we have to. If Tony Blair’s priority really had been, as he claims, to give the police the maximum rights to detain suspects, he would have allowed Charles Clarke to negotiate the 42 or 60 days that he could almost certainly have got.

His intervention over the police detention issue has enabled him, yet again, to refocus the terror debate away from Iraq and also to help prepare for a dignified exit from the stage.

The question for the rest of us is how much longer we can allow these antics to continue.

Robert Napier
Corsham, Wiltshire

SAFETY FIRST: Although I have not supported many of Blair’s policies, particularly those related to the war against Iraq, I am sad to see the pack of jackals surrounding him when he seeks to maintain a high level of security against terror.

Trevor Anderson
Paignton, Devon

LONG MEMORY: I am reminded of Oliver Cromwell’s words in 1653 to the Long Parliament when he thought it was no longer fit to conduct the affairs of the nation: “You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go.”

The same words were quoted with devastating effect by Leo Amery in 1940 and contributed to the fall of Neville Chamberlain. They seem relevant today.

Peter Baseby
Sibford Gower, Oxfordshire

TRANSPARENTLY GOOD: Simon Jenkins (Blair won’t jump . . . and he’s made sure he can’t be pushed, Comment, last week) is right to rail against “the poverty of British democratic accountability”. But he is wrong to suggest that MPs should not call ministers to account for breaches of the ministerial code.

By international standards the conduct of those in public life here (ministers and civil servants) is — despite occasional well-publicised lapses — justifiably regarded as high. In central and eastern Europe, for example, a number of countries have drawn on UK experience, including the ministerial and civil service codes.

Last week’s defeat was good news for parliamentary democracy. What is needed now is a reinforcement of democratic accountability — not Jenkins’s denigration of the code.

Tony Rossiter
Wendover, Buckinghamshire

DEMOCRACY IN ACTION: Blair should surely have been delighted and resoundingly reassured that our parliamentary democracy is alive and well despite the threat of terrorist attacks. That’s what those in Iraq are dying for, isn’t it?

John Thornton
Liverpool