Brendan O’Neill in a piece on Spiked really nailed it when he said that the intervention by the European Court of Human Rights on the matter of Britain ridding itself via Rwanda of illegal migrants makes us ask ourselves ‘who runs Britain?’. Is it the democratically elected government of the United Kingdom implementing a policy that seems to be popular with the people of Britain in charge or is it the ECHR?
Mr O’Neill said:
This is about democracy now. Nothing else. Forget the rights and wrongs of the Rwanda policy – we can discuss those another time. Forget the question of whether this policy will work, whether it will deter those reckless boat crossings in the English Channel – we can come back to that. For now, only one issue matters: who governs this country? Is it me and you and the people we elect into power? Or is it judges in Strasbourg none of us can name, far less cast a ballot for? The deeply disturbing events of last night – where a foreign court helped to block Britain’s democratically elected government from enacting a policy decision – suggest it’s the latter. And that should rattle everyone who believes in the hard-won idea that it’s the people who should rule.
It is indeed about democracy now. When a decision made by a democratically elected UK government can be countermanded by an unelected and completely unaccountable foreign court then that shows that democracy is worthless. If the people cannot decide that they want a government that secures its borders and repels those who have no right to be here then we are not ruled by the government that we chose, instead we are ruled by a judicial chumocracy based in Strasbourg.
BRINO – exactly as predicted, we were misled.
I agree that there is a large element of BRINO about all this but it’s not all the fault of the current government. We should not forget that the less than optimal Brexit process and the ongoing entanglements with the EU are primarily the fault of Theresa May’s government.
The situation was entirely down to the failing Conservative government! I have no love for the ECHR but if our government had passed a law in Westminster to enable the deportations they would have happened. Either the Conservatives didn’t think they could get such a law through the house or they didn’t really want the deportations to go ahead. This time blaming the judges is just double talk and a smoke screen.
Both the May and Johnson governments have really screwed this issue up. It’s quite possible that the govt might not be able to get a robust deportations law through the Commons because of the large number of Tory wets who might as well be members of the Illiberal Undemocrats. There’s also the possibility that leftist elements among the Civil Servants at the Home Office might have deliberately misled ministers with a policy that he CS knew would be shaky.