My linkspam in politics (cn: Tories)

[kaberett]

• The new DWP minister wants to bring back capital punishment [Indy]
  
• The new Equalities minister voted against same-sex marriage and gives no indication of having changed her position [PinkNews]
  
• The new minister for disabled people is strongly against disability benefits and human rights [Benefits&Work]
  
• "Limit the reach of human rights cases to the UK, so that British Armed forces overseas are not subject to persistent human rights claims that undermine their ability to do their job and keep us safe." [Conservative policy on Human Rights, which is horrifying in its entirety.]
  
• ""For too long, we have been a passively tolerant society, saying to our citizens 'as long as you obey the law, we will leave you alone'," [David Cameron] will say." [BBC, the Graun]

Comments

[hairyears]

Few of the politicians involved have any idea that the European Convention on Human Rights was founded through the efforts of that notoriously wishy-washy lefty, Winston Churchill.

That is to say, it was conceived and created by British Conservatives: the ECHR, the associated court, and our binding commitment to enact them in domestic law - which Labour did, in the Human Rights Act.

Two Tories who definitely do know are Michael Gove, the minister tasked with repealing the HRA; and his deputy, Dominic Raab. Both of them have published books and papers on the subject.

You *could* put a case the domestic HRA 'gold-plated' our implementation of the EHCR - this happens a lot with our domestic implementation of directives from an unrelated European institution, the EU - but that won't get them very far. Tinkering, in other words.

With luck, they'll declare a victory for that - some ineffective cosmetic alteration to the forms of our domestic Human Rights legislation - so that they will be lauded for their triumph in the press, and everyone goes home.

However, even that will bring Britain into breach of our treaties with other states: notably, the Good Friday Agreement, which effects a two-power supervisory government of Northern Ireland, is predicated on the existence and enforcement of specific Human Rights legislation. As an absolute minimum, the HRA has to remain in force in that particular devolved region of the United Kingdom.

There's only so far that we can go in having a 'Shenzen' or a 'Hong Kong' with differing rights and laws to the Mainland.

Scotland and Wales have issues there, too: withdrawing the HRA would require that London unilaterally overrules the Devolved governments and *all* their legal powers and administration rights, which calls into question the whole idea of their existence as devolved regions with their own assemblies and Parliaments.

It's feasible, but costly - doing it makes secession politically inevitable; not doing it, in the form of an England-only HRA replacement, makes the United Kingdom a federation of legally-separate countries with distinct and diverging laws and legal systems, sharing a common foreign policy and a handful of 'federal' laws. That's far, far further than 'Devo Max' and it enacts a Scottish 'Yes' vote by the back door - exactly the break-up of the Union that would precipitate a change of government.


Finally, our judiciary have been quietly inserting references to existing British laws and legal precedents into their judgements wherever there's an HRA and ECHR principle with a bearing on the case. It's almost as if they like the ECHR, respect its authority, and saw this coming a decade ago.