It’s a rare and glorious day for British democracy when an MP comes out, not just in direction opposition to the position taken by his party, but proposes the exact opposite action altogether.  As Gordon Brown has announced the extension of compulsory education to 18, starting in 2013, that’s the exact position that Frank Field finds himself in.

Field, Labour MP for Birkenhead and former Minister of State in the Department of Social Security, has urged the government to reduce the age of the end of compulsory education to 14.  If the pupil’s parents wanted them to continue, he or she could.  But, for a pupil to qualify for this early leaving age, he or she would have to pass the equivalent of the standard Key Stage 3 tests in Maths, English, and Science: showing a basic literary, numeracy, and proficiency in each of these subjects.

In conjunction with this, the government could concentrate their pre-14 education on getting these basics right, making sure that everyone is literate and numerate at the age of 14, and making sure that nobody falls through the cracks.  This would allow people to leave education with the foundations upon which to build a career, whilst also giving them two extra years to see if their vocation is for them.

At the same time, the government could save the £11.8bn that he estimates is wasted educating people that don’t reach those basic levels.  That money could be used to fund school vouchers, scholarships for those early school-leavers to return to education later, or returned to the taxpayer from whom it came.

This is an encouraging move towards liberalising what is a very draconian and inefficient one-size-fits-all education system, and moving towards personal choice as the arbiter of a person’s education.

By this system, basic education is improved, making sure that everyone gets a level of literacy required to understand one’s legal and moral rights and participate in society.  Those people not suited to academic education get to work for two years, build up vocational experience, and contribute to, rather than take out of, the taxpayers’ pocket.

That Frank Field is the great promoter of the policy is unsurprising, given his track record.  He has displayed an unwavering belief, derived from his staunch Christianity, in the power of self-improvement and opportunity.  Because of this, and despite representing a very working class constituency, he has actively campaigned in favour of ending the welfare state.

If we want to allow people opportunities, our government has to realise that people can make the vast majority of decisions - even pertaining to the holy cows of education or health - for themselves, and for their families.  Only they can know what’s best for them.  What we all know, though, is that this system benefits nooone: letting down the underachieving children, letting down those that are saddled teaching or learning alongside them, and letting down the taxpayer.

To adopt Brown’s way of thinking, and extending this failure of a system to all those aged under 18, is madness.  To adopt Field’s way of thinking, and removing people from that trap, is common sense.

One thing that all but the most ardently statist apologist can agree is that the past ten years have been a disaster for civil liberties, as one human activity has been criminalised each and every day. However, they haven’t been unmitigated. OK, so more liberal drinking laws hardly make up for mandatory biometric ID cards and an explosion in tracking of us by CCTV cameras, but it’s something worth celebrating. It’s a step in the right direction, even if ten are being taken back at the same time.

Indicative of this contrarian policy stance is the Gambling Act 2005, which came into force at midnight last night. It consolidates statutory laws against gamblers, built up haphazardly since 1845, removes various limits on pay-outs (so-called ’super-casinos’ being the pin-up boys of the new system) and liberalises some of the most stringent regulations against advertising to be found in any industry. That’s the good part.

The bad part is the centralisation inherent to the Act. It outlaws gambling on small premises: supposedly in the name of protecting children, but actually for more the nefarious reason of overseeing and taxing gambling. Take-aways and minicab offices can no longer host the small pay-out fruit machines that made spending time waiting around in them tolerable. Moreover, even larger and more secure premises will be subjected to oversight from the new Gambling Commission.

The question is: why do we need a Gambling Commission at all? Gambling is simply a form of entertainment, to be engaged in freely at the cost of one’s own money. The moralising crusaders might as well ban football, which is far more addictive and costs far more money (although my experience on both counts may be biased by being a season ticket holder at the most attractive and expensive club in the world).

The Salvation Army decries the ‘normalisation’ of gambling, but, actually, the opposite is true, as it brings gambling under stricter and stricter control of the government. No human activity, as simple as gambling and engaged in by two consenting parties, should be regulated as near to eradication as gambling is (the state’s own National Lottery excluded, of course!). To bring normality would be a sweet relief from 162 years of criminalisation.

Sadly, we don’t have normality, and, as is the case with most reliefs under New Labour, this one is not so sweet. Internet gambling fled this country to be rid of over-regulation, yet the government insists that it can pile on more bureaucracy to solve the problem that some people may want different things to the Salvation Army. Each step forward under New Labour has been accompanied by ten backwards, and, sadly, despite the hysteria from the traditionalists, the same is true of the Gambling Act.

It’s no surprise that the Blair years were tough ones for those of us that care deeply about the fundamental rights of the British people. Time and again, liberty was crushed under-foot by a statist juggernaut that thought nothing of taxing and regulating, of criminalising and persecuting.

When citing the government’s illiberalism, legislativism, or centralism, the statistic that is usually brought up is the staggering number of human actions outlawed since 1997: over 3,000, or almost 1 new criminal offence a day, by one count. That’s scary statism at its worst (ironically, according to opinion polls, the public thinks it’s New Labour at its best).

However, that legislative diarrhoea is not even nearly the worst of it. Because, actually, the government doesn’t need to criminalise your action to punish you for it. Under the Terrorism Act 2006, anyone can be detained without trial for 28 days, and treated like a criminal, without the need for the authorities to grant even the courtesy of explaining why one is being detained. The 14-day period was probably intolerable in itself (press charges first, then keep them imprisoned for two weeks: not the other way around). The current limit is worse.

However, despite the current 28-day limit being an Intolerable Act perpetrated against the freedom of man, the government wants to push it further. Gordon Brown has announced his desire to DOUBLE that time again, up to 56 days. In the Commons today, he said that he was “not in favour of indefinite detention”, yet went on to justify his doctrine of imprisoning the innocent for two months because it would be subject to “parliamentary votes”.

Ahem. Pardon my cynicism. So it won’t be decided by Downing Street, but by the House of Commons? And the Prime Minister is nominated by? Oh, right, the House of Commons. Sure, it’s true the government lost the last time they tried to push the 90-day measure through, but that only goes to prove how bad a law it was. Then again, when you have Desmond Tutu comparing your policies to those in Apartheid South Africa, you can be pretty sure it’s not exactly a good law.

The fact that’s lost on Brown, and most people in politics for that matter, is that it doesn’t really matter who’s responsible. Whether it’s an executive or a legislative, an elected officer or an unelected one, an elderly reactionary or a youthful radical, any tyranny is tyranny enough. The fact that Parliament gets to vote, rather than being passed by diktat, is no saving grace. Not for those left to rot in Belmarsh, and not for British liberties.