May on smooth form as MPs try to hack the Ripa

The home secretary handled the snooper's charter debate well, but even supporters seek more details about surveillance

If Theresa May can hang on in her job for just a few more weeks, she will overtake the long-service record of the Victorian home secretary whose lads at the Met failed to catch Jack the Ripper. There was a lot of Ripper talk on Tuesday when MPs debated May's latest version of the snooper's charter. The case casts a shadow over her career too.

Whoops! No. Correction. The menacing "Ripper" they kept mentioning was Labour's half-baked Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act ("often incomprehensible", recalled Tory Euro-martyr Dominic Grieve), known in Whitehall as "Ripa." And "snooper's charter"? Labour's Andy Burnham doesn't care for that label either. Lazy thinking, he said, and mean to hardworking spooks.