WHO RULES? British voters or our sneering elite who think democracy is a dirty word
WANT to know why so many people in the UK feel ignored, insulted and treated with contempt by powerful elites who appear to live in a different world? Then look no further than the prospect of unelected peers in the House of Lords, backed by a well-heeled club of judges, liberal media types, Leftie lawyers and celebrity luvvies, trying to thwart the Government’s new law to deport illegal migrants to Rwanda, which has been passed by elected MPs in the House of Commons.
It is a snapshot of everything that is wrong with our political system, in which Establishment figures appointed to positions of power often act as if they think democracy is a dirty word. No wonder so many European societies, from Italy to Holland, are now in revolt against the old political elites, voting for populist parties which have pledged to cut mass illegal migration.
Many see Britain, more than seven years after the Brexit vote to ‘take back control’, as ripe for a similar democratic revolt, so it’s no surprise that the Government is desperate to be seen to do something about it.
The Rwanda Safety Bill was finally passed in the Commons on Wednesday by a comfortable majority of 44. Yet almost immediately, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak felt obliged to warn unelected peers in the Opposition-dominated House of Lords not to ‘try and frustrate the will of the people, as expressed by the elected House’ by seeking to scupper or delay the legislation.
There can be little doubt that the British people are overwhelmingly on the side of tougher restrictions on immigration. Every poll shows rising public anger about the small boats smuggling illegal migrants on to Britain’s south coast with apparent impunity.
The migration crisis now costs British taxpayers an estimated £3.6 billion per annum. As Tory support in the polls plummets, it has been reported that most of those who voted for Boris Johnson in 2019 but don’t plan to back Sunak next time cited the failure to tackle immigration as the primary reason – 79 per cent of Tory defectors in the North, 75 per cent in the South.
Yet popular support for a crackdown on immigration means nothing to our out- of-touch elites, who carry on undermining Britain’s national sovereignty and democracy in the belief that they know better than — and what’s best for — the rest of us.
The Rwanda Safety Bill is an attempt to circumvent Establishment resistance. It was formulated in response to last year’s Supreme Court verdict, based on New Labour’s Human Rights Act, that it was ‘ unsafe’ for the Government to deport illegal migrants to the African state, and similar democracy-blocking interventions by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). The Bill would disapply large swathes of the Human Rights Act as it relates to deportation cases and give ministers the power to ignore so-called ‘Rule 39’ orders issued by the ECHR that prevented the flights to Rwanda from taking off.
Tory rebels believe these proposals still leave the door open to legal appeals and judicial interference. For our globalist, border-hating elites, however, they go much too far and so we can rely on the unelected House of Lords to take up the cudgels on behalf of the forces of anti- democracy in Britain. According to the website Politico this week, some lords are preparing for ‘trench warfare’ to stop the Bill.
There was no response to the millions of voters who worry about what mass migration is doing to their communities and want their leaders to limit it, as promised. But those vulgar masses are looked down upon with disdain by elites who see the silky liberal judges of the Supreme Court as morally superior to ‘oikish’ Right-wing MPs such as Tory ex-deputy chairman Lee Anderson, and put ‘international law’ enforced by Continental judges above national laws passed by our elected representatives.
The Lords has an anti-Tory majority that may well do its worst to delay and disrupt the Bill, as it has done with previous immigration laws. The Labour Party’s own protocol in the Lords says it should not try to kick out a Bill passed by the Commons.
But that leaves plenty of scope for individual Labour peers to join with others and try to get the Bill bogged down in procedural disputes before the coming election. This conflict throws even bigger political questions into sharp focus. In 2024, why should appointed peers have the power to block laws passed by elected MPs?
Even if some (though not all of us) still see an advisory and amending role for an upper house, there can be no excuse for blatant anti- democratic meddling by the nearly 800 peers that make up the biggest ( and most unrepresentative) legislative assembly outside communist China.
And why, in the post-Brexit era, should the judges of the UK Supreme Court or the ECHR in Strasbourg exercise power over our supposedly sovereign Parliament?
This is a baleful legacy of the Human
Rights Act — based on European law and backed up by the Labour-created Supreme Court — that has had profound consequences for our democracy. As one legal expert argued this week, this system has elevated judge-protected ‘ rights’ over electoral democracy, and imposed a judicial ‘stranglehold’ over parliamentary sovereignty.
Many now seem willing to desert the Tories they blame for betraying Brexit. Yet is Labour, led by arch-Remainer Sir Keir Starmer, really the party for them? Starmer’s ‘ alternative’ to the Rwanda plan seems largely to amount to reducing illegal migration by making more of it legal.
Reform UK, with ‘ Mr Brexit’ Nigel Farage in the wings, is rising in the polls as public anger over uncontrolled migration rises.
Leading pollster James Frayne says that, in 25 years of opinion research, ‘I cannot remember a more disillusioned and angrier electorate’.
The usual suspects will try to blame
Some lords are preparing for ‘ trench warfare’
It comes down to basic principles such as free speech
public anger over migration on simple racism. In reality, migration has become the focus for public concerns, not only about resources and public services but, importantly, about such basic principles of our society as democracy and free speech.
The big, unasked question behind the debate about migration and the Rwanda Safety Bill is: who rules? As we have seen, that issue has sparked anti-Establishment populist rebellions at the polls across Europe. It is now being posed in British politics as the next election looms into sight.