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 Under a majority Conservative Government, the Human Rights Act, which was introduced by Labour in 1998, would be repealed and replaced by this British Bill of Rights.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”
InbredBlockhead
Where do I demand Jews be attacked?
InbredBlockhead
1973: In his book, None Dare Call It Conspiracy, Gary Allen states,
“One major reason for the historical blackout on the role of the international bankers in political history is the Rothschilds were Jewish…
….The Jewish members of the conspiracy have used an organisation called The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) as an instrument to try and convince everyone that any mention of the Rothschilds and their allies is an attack on all Jews.
In this way they have stifled almost all honest scholarship on international bankers and made the subject taboo within universities.
Any individual or book exploring this subject is immediately attacked by hundreds of ADL communities all over the country. The ADL has never let the truth or logic interfere with its highly professional smear jobs…
….Actually, nobody has a right to be more angry at the Rothschild clique than their fellow Jews…
….The Rothschild empire helped finance Adolf Hitler.”
InbredBlockhead
1649: Oliver Cromwell obtains backing from the British parliament for the execution of King Charles I on a charge of treason. Afterwards, Cromwell permits the Jews to enter England again, but does not reverse the Edict of Expulsion issued by King Edward I in 1290, which expelled all Jews forever from England and made the provision that any who remained after November 1st 1290, were to be executed.
Indeed England is not the first country to expel the Jews. Here is a partial list of all the areas from which the Jews have been banished from, sometimes on numerous occasions, over the last thousand years.
Mainz, 1012 Lithuania, 1495
France, 1182 Portugal, 1496
Upper Bavaria, 1276 Naples, 1496
England, 1290 Navarre, 1498
France, 1306 Nuremberg, 1498
France, 1322 Brandenburg, 1510
Saxony, 1349 Prussia, 1510
Hungary, 1360 Genoa, 1515
Belgium, 1370 Naples, 1533
Slovakia, 1380 Italy, 1540
France, 1394 Naples, 1541
Austria, 1420 Prague, 1541
Lyons, 1420 Genoa, 1550
Cologne, 1424 Bavaria, 1551
Mainz, 1438 Prague, 1557
Augsburg, 1438 Papal States, 1569
Upper Bavaria, 1442 Hungary, 1582
Netherlands, 1444 Hamburg, 1649
Brandenburg, 1446 Vienna, 1669
Mainz, 1462 Slovakia, 1744
Mainz, 1483 Moravia, 1744
Warsaw, 1483 Bohemia, 1744
Spain, 1492 Moscow, 1891
Italy, 1492
In his book, “L’antisémitisme son histoire et ses causes,” published in 1894, noted Jewish author, Bernard Lazare, stated the following with regard to these expulsions of Jews,
“If this hostility, even aversion, had only been shown towards the Jews at one period and in one country, it would be easy to unravel the limited causes of this anger, but this race has been on the contrary an object of hatred to all the peoples among whom it has established itself. It must be therefore, since the enemies of the Jews belonged to the most diverse races, since they lived in countries very distant from each other, since they were ruled by very different laws, governed by opposite principles, since they had neither the same morals, nor the same customs, since they were animated by unlike dispositions which did not permit them to judge of anything in the some way, it must be therefore that the general cause of anti-Semitism has always resided in Israel itself and not in those who have fought against Israel.”
Professor Jesse H. Holmes, writing in, “The American Hebrew,” expressed the following similar sentiments,
“It can hardly be an accident that antagonism directed against the Jews is to be found pretty much everywhere in the world where Jews and non-Jews are associated. And as the Jews are the common element of the situation it would seem probable, on the face of it, that the cause will be found in them rather than in the widely varying groups which feel this antagonism.”
Leon Wolfeson
Thanks for your hate lessons against Jews.
It’s clear who your target is, anti-Semite.
Just like your ideological forebears, you lash out at the different. That’s your Common Cause.
Leon Wolfeson
Ah yes, the ZOG conspiracy theory.
Thanks for telling everyone you believe that bit of Jewhate, as you spew against calling hate speech to account, as you see conspiracies crawl out the woodwork rather than trying logic.
And no, they didn’t fund your Hero.