From 42-day detention to ASBOs, as citizens of modern Britain we are seeing some of our fundamental freedoms being pawned off cheaply in the name of security. At the same time, a whole range of novel, and comparatively trivial, rights are being handed out like sweets. Why?

In The Assault on Liberty, a radical polemic on the state of the nation, Dominic Raab asks whether we can really defend our freedom by sacrificing it. The risks to Britain are real and likely to grow unless checked. Raab argues that the long-term risk is that the current approach will undermine the credibility of, and public support for, the very idea of fundamental rights in this country.

‘With literary verve and philosophical insight, Dominic Raab tears into a justice system which has turned Britain’s liberal values upside down. A book that could make Gordon Brown vote Tory’ Nick Cohen

‘A clear-headed and important contribution to our contemporary predicament from one of the most brilliant young political minds of our time’ Peter Oborne

‘[An] excellent book’ Timothy Garton Ash, Guardian

‘As useful a guide as you could want to the consequences to a judicial system of a prolonged absence of proper parliamentary oversight or opposition’ Dominic Lawson, Sunday Times

‘A passionate work [that] laments the loss of our precious civil liberties’ John Kampfner, Observer