The international Left-wing elites are on their way to crushing democracy
The ECHR’S net zero judgment shows why the UK must now leave the court without delay
Democracy is dying, and we are running out of time to save it. The theft of power and influence from ordinary citizens, and its transfer to unelected, unaccountable lawyers and technocrats is accelerating.
The populist backlash, when it comes, will be devastating, but in the meantime the Left-wing elites are doubling down, using every possible justification to expand their empires.
In an incendiary judicial coup this week, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) greatly expanded its own remit while downgrading democracy another notch. In a ruling that would almost be funny if it weren’t so serious, its Grand Chamber ruled that countries that don’t reduce carbon emissions fast enough are violating their citizens’ right to private and family life.
This risible decision is bad news for anybody who questions the rush to compulsory electric cars, or heat pumps, or smart meters, or higher taxes on carbon: your views are no longer welcome, and will no longer matter. The judgment was meted out against Switzerland, but will set a precedent to all signatories of the European Convention on Human Rights, including Britain. The heroic Swiss had voted down a set of net zero measures in a referendum: the ECHR has effectively blown up Europe’s most democratic constitution, in a stark warning to the growing band of net zero dissenters in Britain, France, the Netherlands and Germany.
This isn’t only about the courts telling the politicians to implement their own laws and their own “carbon budgets”, as in a conventional judicial review: this ruling goes much further, stating that the only way a state can stay on the right side of human rights law is by rushing to decarbonise.
The problem is obvious: if a rise in temperature violates our right to a private and family life, what doesn’t? Where will the ECHR power grab end?
The game here is clear. By making everything about “human rights” that cannot be questioned, then the democratic sphere, where we can debate and disagree and vote for different approaches, is drastically curtailed, and the influence of Left-wing lawyers massively increased.
What about NHS waiting lists: are they not a violation of our human rights? Shouldn’t the ECHR order the Tories to spend even more on healthcare? Will somebody test this soon? What about the limited supply of housing, which is pushing up prices? Isn’t that a much more obvious rights violation, as it makes it harder to have a family? Shouldn’t the Court step in here too? And what about too little spending on the military: wouldn’t family life be disrupted in the event of war?
We could also do with more economic growth, higher wages, motherhood and apple pie. Where does the madness end? It is time for Britain to leave the ECHR before it is too late.
I spent hours wading through the judgment, Verein Klimaseniorinnen Schweiz and Others v Switzerland, and found it hard to discern anything in it that could qualify as actual legal reasoning, as opposed to verbiage from a “court” that has given up on any pretence of self-restraint.
It simply decrees that the meaning of Article 8 of the Convention must now encompass “a right for individuals to effective protection by the State authorities from the serious adverse effects of climate change on their lives, health, well-being and quality of life”.
The Convention’s original authors never had anything like that in mind, and surely never dreamt that their post-second World War document would be traduced and distorted in such a way.
Today’s ultra-activist judges are treating the Convention as a “living document”, reinterpreting its meaning as they see fit. The only legally rigorous section in the ruling was the partly dissenting view by Tim Eicke, the sole British judge, who perhaps realises this latest preposterous overreach will one day be remembered as the moment the UK was finally tipped over the edge on the question of withdrawal.
One line in the judgment reveals the deeply authoritarian impulse underlying the decision: in a classic case of Orwellian doublespeak, it reverses the meaning of “democracy” to justify disregarding what the public actually wants. “Democracy cannot be reduced to the will of the majority of the electorate and elected representatives, in disregard of the requirements of the rule of law”, we are told.
This might be interpreted simply as meaning that an angry mob has no right to impose its will without going through proper constitutional procedures. Even in the UK, which has no formal separation of powers and in which Parliament can change any law in any way it likes, our independent courts have long adjudicated on the legality of government actions. If they are deemed unlawful, the government must then follow the law, or else get Parliament to change the law.
Yet this isn’t what the ECHR has in mind, and it conflates the “rule of law” with “rule by lawyers”. It believes democracy should be radically constrained, that the people aren’t wise enough to take decisions, that there are objectively good and correct positions and bad and evil ones. If you trust the voters, you can get Brexit – horror of horrors – or the Swiss rejecting net zero, which is clearly intolerable. Democracy is the political equivalent of pocket money: it should only hold sway over unimportant matters. The real decisions should be taken by objective judges.
Democracy’s pathology is that it can descend into a tyranny of the majority, and an oppression of the minority. But again this isn’t really what the ECHR is worried about. Its allies want to keep moving us from a minimalist interpretation of the rights that should constrain majoritarian rule – the sorts of negative liberties in the US Bill of Rights – to a Left-wing, maximalist one, where we all have a right to every possible good thing, from cheap housing to two holidays a year to no climate change, and where only the details are left to the politicians and the technocrats.
They also believe that consulting the electorate doesn’t work because it doesn’t account for the very young or the as yet unborn, and so the answer is to impose a rights culture which neuters genuine politics. Who guards the guardians? Who runs Britain? It’s time to take back control from these anti-democratic, maniacal elitists.
Allister Heath on Twitter @Allisterheath read More at telegraph.co.uk/ opinion
It is hard to discern anything in this ruling that could qualify as actual legal reasoning, as opposed to verbiage