In the past few months, I’ve given over a couple of posts to the Labour Party and human rights. See my report of Yvette Cooper’s speech, or Sadiq Khan’s speech, for example. As such, its worth bookmarking a recent Daily Telegraph piece by Khan, on the Human Rights Act, and Britain’s relationship with the European Court of Human Rights.
The lay-reader may appreciate a quick overview of these human rights mechanisms. First, the European Convention on Human Rights incorporates basic protections into a Europe-wide treaty. The UK government must protect human rights because it has signed a treaty saying it shall do so—the rights have not been ‘imposed’ on us by European bureaucrats. The convention also establishes a court (at Strasbourg) to hear cases of human rights abuses. We in UK and the other signatory states are bound by the rulings of the court because we chose to sign the treaty. Continue reading
Tag: Politics (Page 24 of 57)
King Juan Carlos is to abdicate. I love this simple poster design, campaigning for a referendum on the future of the monarchy.
The abdication reminds me of the point I made in last week’s post about MP recalls, where I said:
If the electorate cannot get rid of their representative outside of election time … I think its is only fair that the representatives cannot rid themselves of their electorate either.
I think a similar principle holds for monarchies. If the hereditary principle means that people cannot choose their head of state, then its inconsistent and wrong for the monarch to be able to choose whether or not they serve as head of state! If we allow blood-lines to play a part in our constitution then we have to accept whatever gaffe-prone idiot that genetics throws up… and that idiot is stuck with the populous too.
To my mind, a single abication undermines the whole idea of hereditary monarchy. Any country where that happens should transition to a full democracy with an elected or legislature-appointed head of state (I prefer democracies with a nominal, not executive president but I’m sure there are arguments for and against both models). I hope that the abdication of the Spanish King triggers a referendum that ends the anacronism.
It’s rare that I’m at odds with that über efficient mass progressive campaigning movement, 38 Degrees, but today I am.
Their latest campaign is in favour of an MP ‘recall’ system.
MPs can be sent to prison, can fiddle their expenses or break their promises and we can only get rid of them on election day.
The answer, they say, is a ‘recall’ law by which 10% of the electorate could sign a petition that forces a by-election.
I disagree with this idea for reasons of pragmatism and principle. First, a recall law could used to hack and disrupt the political system. Continue reading
The European and local elections are just one day away and there are plenty of pre-mortems around about the rise of UKIP, the disintegration of the Liberal Democrats and the failure of both the Conservative and Labour parties to build public support.
There are also lots of anti-political sentiments around too. On the Today Programme at the beginning of the week, we heard from some British voters who were lamenting the poor quality of our politicians. They’re duplicitous and lazy, apparently.
What’s lazy is that attitude.
Continue reading
It seems to be a cast iron rule of politics that our leaders will become more authoritarian when they take office. The standard explanation for this is that they simply become drunk on power. But at the Time for A Digital Bill of Rights? parliamentary meeting yesterday, Liberal Democrat MP Tim Farron gave a more nuanced explanation:
No-one will assent to rules that imply that they may abuse their power.
There is a tendency in the debate around mass surveillance to attribute malign motives to everyone in government and the security services. This in turn alienates those in power, and promotes the belief that civil liberties campaigners are shrill, paranoid exaggerators! So this alternative formulation, which avoids the cod-psychological explanations about power, corruption, and malign motives, is very welcome.
Farron went on to point out that this does not absolve those politicians of blame for neglecting civil liberties. What they forget, he said, is that our laws need to be constructed so as to protect citizens from future corrupt governments. This rather obvious point is often lost on Ministers who are concerned with the here-and-now.