There’s an old joke about former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher which goes something like this:

Mrs. Thatcher and her Cabinet sit down for lunch and the waiter asks her what she would like for her meal.

“I’ll have the steak, please,” she replies.

“Yes, Ma’am, and for the vegetables?” asks the waiter.

Looking at her Cabinet Ministers, Mrs. Thatcher says: “They’ll have the steak too.”

It has to be assumed that Premier Dr. Ewart Brown’s Cabinet must feel fairly vegetable-like this week after being presented with a fait accompli after the four detainees from Guantanamo Bay had arrived.

Deputy Premier Paula Cox admitted in the House of Assembly last Friday that she felt “politically neutered” and other Ministers have privately admitted their fury at being treated as after-thoughts. Yet not one has resigned or even made a public protest. Is being in the Cabinet so wonderful that they will endure any and every humiliation Dr. Brown can pile on them?

Perhaps we will find out today, when the House of Assembly debates a motion of no confidence in the Government led by Dr. Brown.

Although this is a confidence motion, it is very much a debate on Dr. Brown’s leadership since he became Premier in 2006. And it will have a primary focus on Dr. Brown’s handling of the Uighur crisis.

As such, two points are critical.

The first is Dr. Brown’s decision to conduct the negotiations, such as they were, in secret, and therefore without the knowledge of the British Government or his own Cabinet.

In doing so, Dr. Brown breached the very Constitution and laws of Bermuda that he had sworn an oath to uphold. Dr. Brown is decisive, but when decisiveness results in deliberate breaches of the law, there is something wrong. This is not a small matter; a man who will breach the Constitution and enter into illegal agreements will always be tempted to do so again if there are no consequences.

It also goes to character. Not for the first time, Dr. Brown opted for deception over honesty. He did so, no doubt, in the knowledge that the British would have turned down any attempt to bring the Uighurs here. So rather than holding an open debate on the issue, he chose to deceive and mislead. As in 2003, when Dr. Brown tried to topple Dame Jennifer Smith as Premier, the end justified the means. In 2003, Dr. Brown had to mislead PLP supporters. In 2009, he had to deceive the British, and in doing so his own Cabinet, Parliament and the public.

He now seems to recognize that this was a mistake, and it would be nice to think that he has learned from it. But there are no guarantees of that. He has done it at least twice. Why not a third time?

It has been stated, correctly, that other governments have taken detainees from Guantanamo Bay. But they have done so openly. The Pacific nation of Palau is still negotiating the terms of its acceptance of Uighurs, and may yet not take them. Spain has indicated it may take four detainees, but wishes to conduct full security checks and consider each candidate before accepting them. These countries are acting openly and democratically. Dr. Brown acted in secret.

In doing so, he prevented Bermuda from doing proper security checks on the Uighurs and threw doubt on their innocence. In doing so, he is unable even to say if he will get anything in return. Certainly the US will never say that it is trading tax concessions for human beings.

The Government public relations machine has been working at full speed in the last week, producing statements of gratitude from human rights groups and US Congressmen to Bermuda for accepting the Uighurs.

But none of these groups seem to recognise the irony in Bermuda’s decision to restore the civil rights of the Uighurs – that in doing so, Dr. Brown rode roughshod over the civil rights of Bermudians.

Congressmen praising Bermuda should be grateful, because they have signally failed to convince their own colleagues that the detainees are harmless. But at least the US Congress was asked. Bermuda’s Parliamentarians never were. If the reverse had happened, one can only imagine the uproar in the US.

MPs today have a choice. They can say that the end justifies the means, that deception is acceptable and that they have no function or meaning in the political decision making process of this Island. Or they can say that due process matters (and isn’t that why Guantanamo Bay is wrong?), that honesty and transparency are at the heart of Government and that elected Members of Parliament have meaning and are not vegetables.