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 Under a majority Conservative Government, the Human Rights Act, which was introduced by Labour in 1998, would be repealed and replaced by this British Bill of Rights.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”
Guest
“let`s be equally hard on the causes of Zionism”
The cause of Zionism is Jews existing. If you like it or not (and evidently you don’t).
You’re happy to be an anti-British hardcore “nationalist” for your own cause, of course.
InbredBlockhead
1891: The British Labour Leader makes the following statement on the subject of the Rothschilds,
“This blood-sucking crew has been the cause of untold mischief and misery in Europe during the present century, and has piled up its prodigious wealth chiefly through fomenting wars between States which ought never to have quarrelled.
Whenever there is trouble in Europe, wherever rumours of war circulate and men’s minds are distraught with fear of change and calamity you may be sure that a hook-nosed Rothschild is at his games somewhere near the region of the disturbance.”
Comments like this worry the Rothschilds and towards the end of the 1800’s they purchase Reuters news agency so they can have some control of the media.
InbredBlockhead
1914: The start of World War I. In this war, the German Rothschilds loan money to the Germans, the British Rothschilds loan money to the British, and the French Rothschilds loan money to the French.
Futhermore, the Rothschilds have control of the three European news agencies, Wolff (est. 1849) in Germany, Reuters (est. 1851) in England, and Havas (est. 1835) in France.
The Rothschilds use Wolff to manipulate the German people into a fervour for war. From around this time, the Rothschilds are rarely reported in the media, because they own the media.
Leon Wolfeson
Thank you for proving my point, quite nicely, with more Jewhate from you.
Now there’s a ZOG media conspiracy…
InbredBlockhead
The origins of the Tory grief is rooted, in part, in three disputed judgments handed down by the Strasbourg-based court on prisoner voting, life sentences for prisoners, and the deportation of alleged terrorist Abu Qatada.
All three decisions are unpopular in the UK, sparking complaints against the overall binding nature of the European court judgments on British law.
While the judgments are binding, their enforcement is limited to exerting peer pressure from the council of ministers, a political body.
The UK wins most of the cases brought against it.
Last year, the court dealt with 1,652 applications concerning the UK – 1,633 or 98.8 percent were declared inadmissible or struck out.
Only in eight cases – or 0.4 percent – did the court find at least one violation of convention rights.
The UK has had a total of 499 judgments passed onto it between 1959 and 2013. By comparison, Turkey has had 2,994, Italy 2,268, Russia 1,475 and France 913.
There are four possible scenarios for the UK and the Council of Europe.
First, it can remain a member. Second, it can withdraw after a six-month notice and join Belarus as the only other European nation not in the body.
Greece, while under military dictatorship rule, is so far the only country to have ever withdrawn membership.
Third, the Council can either accept specific arrangements for the UK, which don’t apply to the other 46 states running the risk that Russia, Turkey, Azerbaijan, possibly others may also make similar demands.
Fourth, the Council can accept in principle that the court’s judgement just becomes advisory.
The UK was among the first to ratify the European convention of human rights in 1950