Until we quit unaccountable, anti-democratic and bloated Court of Human Rights, Brexit will remain a job half done

Yesterday, predictably, a gloating chorus of progressives was cheering to the rafters the grounding of the Migrant express to rwanda. But let’s just look at the facts. a British government, elected on a landslide only 30 months ago, decided on a policy: to process the applications of certain asylum seekers offshore.

Named judges in two english courts — the High Court and the UK supreme Court — heard the migrants’ cases and ruled that the flight should go ahead.

and then, at the eleventh hour on tuesday night, with the plane waiting to take off from a Wiltshire air base, an unnamed judge sitting in a european court and overseen by an unelected body kept the wheels locked on the tarmac.

It is an outrage — and an insult to British voters and our ancient legal system.

Leaving the eU was meant to bring us sovereignty over our laws and borders. yet, disgracefully, we remain subservient to the european Court of Human rights (eCHr), which is not part of the eU. today, we need no more proof. the rwanda fiasco shows that until we quit the eCHr entirely, Brexit will be a job half-done.

In recent decades, two foreign courts have stuck their fingers up to British democracy. One is the european Court of Justice, which concerns itself, among other things, with eU trade disputes and

social matters. thankfully, through the Brexit vote, we have sacked it.

the second is the eCHr, which we clearly ought to sack. yesterday, I said as much to the Ministry of Justice, which sought my advice on certain questions of human rights. I wasn’t surprised they got in touch: we eCHr sceptics are pitifully few in the legal profession.

as a writer and as the Chair in Law at swansea University, my day-job is nonpolitical. Unlike many in the liberal legal establishment, I don’t have a background in human-rights activism honed by Left-wing NGOs, pressure groups and charities.

Given that I’m resolutely outside the Islington set, I believe I can judge the eCHr dispassionately. and I haven’t liked what I’ve seen for decades.

the Court has crept into the lives of its unfortunate subjects far beyond its original remit. Much as the eU grew from a simple economic treaty into an undemocratic and unaccountable supra- national political monster, so the eCHr has expanded to such an extent that it is now a threat to British democracy.

remember the fable of aesop’s frog? the frog wanted to be as big as an ox, so she puffed herself up

— and in the end she burst. If we carry on subjecting ourselves to the eCHr’ s expansive interpretation of human rights, our own legal system will burst just as spectacularly.

Faith in the law is a prerequisite for a civil society. a public that finds the rulings of a court consistently intolerable — as millions clearly do when it comes to judgments such as this — will find their support for the legal system evaporates, and with it the foundations of the state. It is that serious. so how did we come to this sorry pass?

It was tony Blair who in 1998 saddled this country with the Human rights act (Hra), which enshrined the european Convention of Human rights into UK law.

there was no groundswell of public opinion for this, but Blair buckled under the weight of the human- rights establishment, comprised as it did then, and does now, of activist lawyers (not least his wife, who was swiftly joining their ranks).

these lawyers knew they stood to make millions in fees — including from the taxpayer — for all the work set to gush their way. to be fair to Blair, however, the Hra was largely a political gesture. Britain was already bound by eCHr rulings, and the act merely instructed UK judges to make similar rulings, saving the claimant a trip to strasbourg.

Nevertheless, Blair’s characteristically attentionseeking behaviour as he announced the act put ‘human rights’ on the lips of every litigious person with an axe to grind. Over time, it has made the British people think slippery lawyers preserve their ‘yooman rights’ — and not they themselves, at the ballot box.

that is why, since 1998, all sorts of dubious cases citing ‘ human rights’ have passed before the anonymous judges of strasbourg. the right to ‘ privacy’ is particularly popular, as peddled by former Formula One boss Max Mosley in 2008 after he was caught by a redtop newspaper engaging in a revolting German-speaking orgy.

Needless to say, such tawdry cases were not the sort of thing for which the eCHr was designed.

In 1948, as europe was emerging from the carnage of total war, and as half the continent laboured under the Communist yoke, the

Convention was meant to enshrine basic liberties protecting people from the horrors of dictatorships.

People had the ‘right to life’: not to be shot against a wall or gassed in a concentration camp.

they had the right not to be ‘tortured’ by some future Gestapo. and they had the right to ‘privacy’: not to have their door broken down by soldiers at 2am.

Winston Churchill, who was involved in the planning of the Convention, never intended it to be enshrined in UK law at all, because he knew that Britain had never succumbed to totalitarianism.

Over time, however, the reach of the Convention and the court that upheld it stretched out of all recognition.

Now it’s as bloated as the eU itself: a de facto constitution for the UK, akin to the american Bill of rights. and, remember, none of us voted for it in its present form.

so, given all that, what should happen now?

For the time being, Home secretary Priti Patel has bowed to the ruling on the rwanda flight. she has said she will appeal the decision and that the UK government remains inside the eCHr — although the Justice secretary, dominic raab, has

The Court has crept into our lives far beyond its original remit

People think that slippery lawyers preserve their rights

The Europhile media will be apoplectic, as will Remainers

suggested the UK might ignore future rulings from the court.

this must not be the last word. We need to get out. yes, the europhile media — not least the BBC and the Guardian — will be apoplectic, as will the screeching commentariat of diehard remainers. they’re all wrong. even outside the remit of the eCHr, our individual liberties should and must remain protected by law. as we spurn strasbourg’s alien and inappropriate system, we should devise our own Bill of rights, reinterpreting the Convention’s articles in a sober and limited way appropriate to this nation in this century.

UK judges should rule on UK cases.

and the laws to which the British judges are bound must be made by Parliament: an elected bastion of democracy, not the Council of europe, a self-important talkingshop that answers to no- one but itself.

to use Blair’s own sickly phrase against him, will we ever see that ‘new dawn’ breaking? Well, not so long ago, no one thought we’d leave the eU. But we did.

I believe that strasbourg has become just as much of a threat to our democracy and sovereignty as Brussels once was — and we must rid ourselves of this monster, too.

Let the Government take this latest insult for what it is — and let the process start at once.

Andrew TeTTenborn is a writer and a professor of law at Swansea University.