Young Dave was unequivocal: despite the Tories coming third
in Eastleigh, there
would be no “lurch to the right”.
Sadly for him, his own ministers are now clearly manoeuvring somewhere behind him
to suggest that lurching to the right is exactly what is being offered to the
electorate, with the resultant breakdown in party discipline splashed all over
the Mail On Sunday.
And, despite former Standard
man Geordie Greig being nominally in charge at the MoS, today’s lead story, “A
Great Day For British Justice”, under the by-line of serially
dishonest political editor Simon Walters, is straight out of the playbook of
the legendarily foul mouthed Paul Dacre, Greig’s managing editor. And so is the
editorial backing up the article.
Put directly, the MoS
is claiming that the UK will withdraw from the European Convention on Human
Rights (ECHR). The claim is also made that this will be down to Home Secretary
Theresa May, and not Cameron. So it is her team that is leaking the story to
the MoS, and moreover, it’s a story
that has absolutely zero basis in fact. But she will not get the sack, or even
a reprimand.
The UK will not be ditching the ECHR – which it signed up to in 1950 –
any time soon, if at all. And far from being “discredited”, as Walters pretends, the ECHR, along with the Human
Rights Act, guarantees basic freedoms to all citizens – even Mail journalists – which we would be
most foolish to give away. Perhaps Ms May, and her new pal Dacre, would like to
tell readers what they would scrap.
Here’s
a summary: “The right to life. The
right not to be tortured or subjected to inhuman or degrading treatment or
punishment. The right not to be enslaved. The right to liberty and security of
the person. The right to a fair trial. The right not to be retrospectively penalised.
The right to respect for private and family life. Freedom of thought, conscience
and religion. Freedom of expression. Freedom of assembly and association. The
right to marry. The right not to be discriminated against in the enjoyment of
those rights. The right not to have our property taken away except in the
public interest and with compensation. The right of fair access to the
country’s educational system. The right to free elections”.
No pressure, Home Secretary and like-minded Tories. No
pressure, nice Mr Dacre. Just tell us which of those human rights you would
deny us. Tell us which of those freedoms you would take away. Tell us which of
those provisions is “discredited”.
The inconvenient fact is that no reasonable person would
vote for a party that took away any of those human rights. After all, the
withdrawal of our fundamental freedom is the behaviour of tyrants and
dictators. And that leads to a very dark place indeed.
But thanks for telling
us how desperate the Tories are right now.
3 comments:
It's almost as if there was an organised campaign. Here's Nick "Nice but Thick" Herbert's latest wittering on the matter: http://www.nickherbert.com/media_centre.php/577/whats-gone-wrong-with-rights
Essentially, if you believe the lies the Mail has made about ECHR, Yuman Rights etc, then it follows that something needs to be done about it. That something is not, of course, a search for the truth but rather a bonkers proposal to remove rights that assumes its only the right kind of people who will suffer.
I'm no fan of the Mail's take on the ECHR, but it's not correct to claim that withdrawing from the ECHR would mean the abolition of these rights. Nobody is arguing against the right to life, right not to be tortured, or anything else in the list. The issue is over who interprets the rules. Some articles in the convention are very specific over what is and isn't allowed (e.g. the right to a fair trial), and that works quite well. Other articles are vague (e.g. the right to a family life), and this is where we're getting problems. Because when rules are this vague and have so little oversight from a legislature, this gives far too much power to unelected judges and lawyers.
I think David Cameron hit the nail on the head when he said that the ECHR is turning into a small claims court. But the only people seriously advocating outright withdrawal as a solution are the Mail et al. There's a good chance of getting the Convention overhauled - 73 years is a quite reasonable time to have a another look and see how well the rules are working. Failing that, there are ways of tightening up UK laws to be more resilient to the odd silly decision. For the Mail's idea, the words "sledgehammer" and "walnut" spring to mind.
63 years, Chris. And your last sentence is spot on.
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