Chris Grayling’s proposals are a calculated move to win over UKIP’s growing constituency of angry little men
The world’s dictators and autocrats will sleep a little sounder tonight. “No more lectures Mr Cameron,” they will say, in preparation for the next time our Prime Minister attempts to talk about human rights violations on the world stage. And then, perhaps cordially, they will telephone our PM to congratulate him: ‘welcome to the club’.
Justice Secretary Chris Grayling will today set out the Government’s plans for a “British Bill of Rights and Responsibilities”. Or in the words of Amnesty International, Grayling will propose “a blueprint for human rights you would expect from a country like Belarus”. Under a majority Conservative Government, the Human Rights Act, which was introduced by Labour in 1998, would be repealed and replaced by this British Bill of Rights.
Britain may not yet be a “banana republic”, but such is the state of politics in this country that a winning electoral strategy now involves posturing as if you want the UK to become one.
The Conservatives’ attempt at trashing the Human Rights Act is pure Ukip-fodder; where Nigel Farage goes, the establishment follows. Farage, an admirer of Vladimir Putin, the bare-chested persecutor of homosexuals, is now the trend-setter of British conservatism. And if that means pretending to line up alongside Europe’s last outpost of unadulterated despotism for electoral advantage, then so be it.
I say this because, despite the sabre rattling, scrapping the Human Rights Act is not as revolutionary an act as the Justice Secretary is making out. According to Barrister and Former government Lawyer Chris Garner, “many of these changes are sounding brass”. Hot air and red meat for the gutter press, in other words; but very little that would actually change very much.
No doubt to the chagrin of the right-wing press, the Government is not proposing a withdrawal from the European Convention on Human Rights, nor is it opting out of the jurisdiction of the European Court. This means that the proposed British Bill of Rights would not have stopped hate preacher Abu Qatada from delaying his removal from the country (his deportation would still have breached the Convention) and it means that under Grayling’s plans prisoners would still not have the vote.
And this gets to the nub of the matter. Grayling’s proposals are a calculated political move by a government that is desperately seeking to win over UKIP’s growing constituency of angry little men. “I wouldn’t say the plan signifies nothing; but it’s not as significant at it sounds,” as Garner puts it. The changes are largely cosmetic. They are alpha male posturing. Or as the cliché goes, the Tories are trying to “out UKIP UKIP”.
And yet sound and fury matter. And they matter beyond the parochial and tedious fight over UKIP/Tory marginals. For while Grayling’s plan may not result in a sweeping transformation at home, the message it sends abroad is unambiguous: no more human rights lectures from Britain.
Rather than being a “gift to our enemies”, as the Daily Mail would have it, the Human Rights Act is actually the opposite. Introduced by New Labour in a moment of radicalism, it undermines the Russias, the Venezuelas and the Saudi Arabias of the world by providing an example of something better.
That something is universality: the idea that regardless of ethnicity, gender, sexuality or political affiliation, human beings are basically the same, and as such are deserving of the same treatment by the State. National “sovereignty”, the refuge of every dictator and demagogue the world over, is replaced by the sovereignty of the individual. In a reversal of the formulation deployed by your average kleptocracy, human rights emphasise a citizen’s unencumbered right to interfere in their own internal affairs.
Unfortunately, and in common with the Chinese Politburo, the Conservatives are this week loudly emphasising the importance of “sovereignty” when it comes to democracy and human rights; even if, in the case of the latter, they don’t really mean it.
And if talking up human rights matters, talking them down matters more. Now we must expect the world’s most unpleasant regimes to do the same. And when the latter do it, they will really mean it, with consequences far beyond a short-term bounce in the polls and a kick in the shin for Mr Farage. Dictators around the world will applaud this Tory human rights vandalism, even if it is make-believe.
James Bloodworth is the editor of Left Foot Forward. Follow him on Twitter
64 Responses to “The Conservatives’ plan to scrap the Human Rights Act will be applauded by dictators around the world”
The_Average_Joe_UK
Typical left wing we know it all self righteous frothing at the mouth. The point of bringing in Human rights from the European Union as that we address the issues with Strasbourg and it becoming a charter for criminals and terrorists.
THE UK HAS ONE OF THE BEST AND MOST IMPARTIAL LEGAL SYSTEMS GLOBALLY. We are not a banana republic. The Bill of rights can give us all the protection Strasbourg gives us, but with out the excesses.
Move along, nothing to see here but a load of BS from a failed journalist and lefty BS’er.
JoeDM
Human rights and democracy have been central to the British way of life for centuries. We do not need foreign courts to impose their own foreign interpretations on us.
Dave C
What a load of old rubbish. When did the ordinary working man get the right to vote and why?
InbredBlockhead
WTF?
InbredBlockhead
In his address to the (rapidly declining) faithful
at the Tory Party Conference, David Cameron promised to scrap the 1998 Human
Rights Act which incorporates the European Convention on Human Rights into
British Law.
So far so good. This Act must be one of the most unpopular measures ever
enacted by any government, ever.
Needless to say, Tony Blair and the wretched New Labour administration he
headed were responsible for it.
Blair said that it was one of the ‘achievements’ he was most proud of.
But then, Blair doesn’t believe in democracy, as he amply demonstrated when
he flooding the country with millions of unwanted and unvoted-for alien
immigrants, contrary to the deeply -felt wishes of the bulk of the
population.
For, as the former Lord Chief Justice Lord Judge has written in the legal
trade publication Counsel, the supra-natural European Court of Human Rights
(ECHR) is “undemocratic” and “undermines the sovereignty of Parliament” via its
unelected judges.
The court disregards the “democratic process” as British MPs are obliged to
follow the rulings of ECHR judges, such as allowing prisoners to vote.
Lord Judge went on. “In any country which embraces the principle of
democracy, and certainly in the United Kingdom, ultimate authority over
constitutional and societal questions is not vested in a body of judges, however
wise and distinguished, and even if the system for their appointment is beyond
criticism,” he added.
But listen to the opinion of the senior Judge, Lord Neuberger, President of
the Supreme Court. Neuberger accepts the undemocratic nature of the Human Rights
Court and rejoices in it.
In a speech to an audience of lawyers in Melbourne in August this year,
Neuberger said that the Human Rights Act gave the courts carte blanche to make
up the law, because it effectively gave the views of the judiciary precedence
over Parliament. He said this extra power for judges was a good thing – because
it kept governments in check.
Well now, why would a man like Neuberger think that the diktats of an
unaccountable, unelected foreign court whose thinking is based on nothing
whatsoever but the prejudices of the judges, are to be preferred to the views of
the British Parliament, however flawed the democratic process that elected it?
Wouldn’t control by these judges be the very antithesis of democracy?
Yes it would, and that is the whole point.
Leftists / Liberals just love the Human Rights Court because it is indeed
‘supranational’ and so anti-national and because it hands unlimited power to
these judges to interfere in myriad aspects of national life This is because
its concepts are vaguely broadbrush and can be interpreted to mean just about
anything.
The power of the European Court of Human Rights to enforce its own views on
Britain is a most powerful form of judicial review.
And,in the words of Robert Bork, the American Supreme Court nominee in his
book ‘Slouching towards Gomorrah’,
In the United Kingdom, the primary proponents of adopting a written
constitution and the power of judicial review of legislation are the Labor Party
and the intellectuals.
That development would shift a great deal of power from the British
electorate to judges who would better reflect the leftish agendas of labor and
intellectuals.
Cultural and political victories would then be achieved in the courts
that could not be achieved in Parliament. The British exponents of judicial
supremacy have learned from the American experience.’
Bork details the American experience of rule by the judges of the Supreme
Court thus;
‘In its cultural –political role, the
Court almost invariably advances the agenda of modern liberalism. That is to
say, the Justices, or a majority of them, are responsible in no small measure
for the spread of both radical individualism and radical egalitarianism…… When
liberty and equality come into conflict, the Court almost always prefers
equality, even in its modern, corrupt, egalitarian form.
Bork went on, ‘This is a philosophy, or mood , that cannot be
derived from the Constitution. It is approved however by..the intellectual class
. That class has distinctive attitudes well to the left of the American
center.’
(Because he was insufficiently left /liberal, Bork’s nomination was rejected
by the US Senate in a campaign so vicious it coined a new phrase; ‘to
Bork’).
The intellectual class is powerful because it controls the dissemination of
facts, whether true or false and can make and unmake reputations. Judges belong
to that class and so absorb its viewpoints and predilections naturally.
Thus it is reasonable to think that when Neuberger made his remarks he
assumed that judges, both British and European, would always interpret ‘Rights’
in a leftish, liberal, way.
Certainly, the selection procedure for British judges as laid down by the
Judicial Appointments Commission (JAC) is a Cultural Marxist manifesto.
It is replete with references to the desirability of ‘diversity’. It is a
blueprint for the entrenchment of left-liberal assumptions as the benchmark of
‘unbias’.
Thus, the Guidelines have the following:
THE JAC’S INTERVIEWING PANELS
Recommendation 31
The JAC must assemble diverse selection
panels. There should always be a gender and, wherever possible, an ethnic
mix.
Recommendation 32
Panel chairs and members must receive
regular equality and diversity training that addresses how to identify and value
properly transferable skills and also to ensure that they are aware of any
potential issues regarding their unconscious bias.
Recommendation 33
All JAC selection panel chairs and members
should be regularly appraised and membership periodically refreshed. Poorly
performing panel members should be removed.”
“APPOINTMENT TO THE SUPREME COURT AND COURT
OF APPEAL
Recommendation 41
The selection process for vacancies in the
most senior courts should be open and transparent, with decisions made on an
evidence base provided by the applicant and their referees in response to
published criteria. No judge should be directly involved in the selection of
his/her successor and there should always be a gender and, wherever possible, an
ethnic mix on the selection panel’.
And who was mostly responsible for these guidelines?
Why – wait for it – one Baroness Neuberger. Baroness Neuberger is the sister
– in-law of Lord Neuberger, the Supreme Court Judge aforesaid.
Her curriculum vitae holds no surprises given the tenor of her guidelines:
‘Rabbi Julia Babette Sarah Neuberger, Baroness Neuberger, DBE (born 27 February
1950; née Julia Schwab) is a member of the British House of Lords.
She formerly took the Liberal Democrat whip, but resigned from the party and
joined the Crossbenches in September 2011 upon becoming the full-time Senior
Rabbi to the West London Synagogue.’ Neuberger has been president of the Liberal
Judaism movement since January 2007. Her daughter Harriet was advertised as a
’Gay Bride’.
(David Cameron wants to replace the Human Rights Act with a British Bill of
Rights and to deny the European Court of Human Rights the right to overrule
British Courts. But this seems to leave the undemocratic, because abused, power
of Judicial Review in place, for who would interpret this Bill of Rights but
Judges of the Supreme Court like Lord Neuberger?)
The question arises: why do we need a ’Bill of Rights’? We got on very well
without these so-called Rights, (far better than the Continental countries which
had them, when we had to rely fundamentally on our well-understood ancient
customs and the people’s Common Law rather than ‘Rights’ handed down to the
people as if graciously from on high by their betters in the Continental manner.
These Continental-style ‘Rights’ fly in the face of British tradition. In
Britain what was not illegal, was legal. On the Continent, everything was
illegal unless made specifically legal.
As Edmund Burke remarked,
‘In the famous law… called the Petition of Right, the parliament says to
the king, “Your subjects have inherited this freedom”, claiming their franchises
not on abstract principles “as the rights of men”, but as the rights of
Englishmen, and as a patrimony derived from their forefathers.’