Clegg's coup

Victor Southern

* Michael Pinto-Duschinsky: political academic who wrote Bringing Writes Back Home for Policy Exchange. Has no legal expertise, as he demonstrated when giving evdience to the Select Committee on Tuesday last week.

Perhaps can't spell either since it is Rights that we are discussing.

Steve Tierney

Just "accept" it, huh?

I don't think so.

Vulture

Excellent piece by Fraser which leaves no more room for possible doubt: we are living in a post-democacy where our laws are made by a small band of unelected left-liberal lawyers.

And there is damn all that our elected politicians can do about it, even if they wished to - which most of them don't.

There is only one way to reclim our stolen liberty: by voting for the one party which backs our withdrawal from the EU & ECHR.

Raffles

Tell me once again what level of hypocrisy does it take for a "liberal" who bangs on about localsism and true democracy to be such an unadulterated fan of the European project. Is anybody ever going to ask this clown because obviously the BBC wont.

and I'll go to bed at noon

I'd take this "60%" figure a lot more seriously if I thought for a second most of those people had the first idea about the actual contents of the ECHR. Instead, I strongly suspect that all they know is what they've been told by the tabloid right: that "human rights" is a smokescreen to take power away from the deserving (white, male, heterosexual, British, able-bodied) and give it to the undeserving (brown, female, gay, foreign, disabled), which they have been led to believe is the overwhelming tendency of all modern government. This is why we HAVE a judiciary, as an unelected check on the power of the masses.

Time was when real conservatives appreciated the limits of mob rule. Fraser is just the man working the lever on the prolefeed engine. I don't notice him taking public opinion so seriously on matters where it happens to be massively against him, like taxing the wealthy.

Do you think you could actually lay out which specific parts of the ECHR you object to, and why, instead of murmuring darkly about an alleged "lefty judiciary"?

John Bracewell

It is to be hoped that, nearer the end of this coalition government when Cameron no longer needs to prolong it, instead of putting his personal gain of remaining as PM as paramount, he seeks to reverse some of the EUphile nonsense that is being supported by Clegg at al. However, I have grave doubts that Cameron sees the dangers, that Mr Nelson has in this piece clearly spelt out, as being a problem.

Craig Strachan

Fraser Nelson: "It's time to accept that Britain, like America, now has a system where an activist judiciary decides laws"

Yes, but at least in America the judges are Americans.

Publius

Do I sense an oh-so-quiet cave-in is imminent on votes for prisoners? The gov't have been waiting for a good day to bury bad news for a while now.

johnfaganwilliams

Am I being thick? There seem to be four Tory votes (in favour) three Libs (against) and one neutral. Why is it a foregone conclusion that the 3 Libs are going to overrule 4/5 others?

Edward Sutherland

The Conservative manifesto for the next election must contain a firm commitment to withdraw from the Council of Europe and the ECHR.This must surely be in Britain's best interest; it will also be a clear dividing line between the Conservatives and Labour-Libdems.

RCE

A good day to bury bad news.

In2minds

"Clegg is a firm believer in Europe" -

But so is Cameron, after all it was he who appointed Ken Clarke, with help like that there's no hope. Cameron is part of the problem and not the solution, why pretend otherwise?

Publius

"Having failed to restore power to parliament, it's time to admit we're in an era of judicial activism."

-- No! We fight and continue fighting.

Perry

Save your energy. Dry your eyes.

You may then clearly see the relief on the face of CMD.

It was after all only gesture politics.

Nothing will disturb the oleagenous relationship between CMD, His Hero, and the EUSSR.

And think of all the lovely dosh that will continue to flow towards those limpid legal minds.

yank

What a rotten soup.

Surrendering sovereignty, without a shot being fired, and with nary a whimper from the sheeple.

The world weeps.

Gawain

At least we now know what the point of Clegg is. To promote European, judicial government and to frustrate representative democracy. Politically he's a walking corpse !

Commentator

Can we please stop calling these people "leading Human Rights experts"? Human Rights law is not an "expertise". It's a political agenda dressed up as law and pursued by a collection of ideologically driven lawyers, both on and off the bench, many of whom are second division (e.g. Cherie Blair). All of them share a contempt for democratic processes.

Clegg hasn't played a blinder. Cameron shares his agenda and simply allowed him to get away with it.

TomTom

Clegg has outmanoeuvred Conservatives from the outset

Richard Calhoun

Quite honestly Fraser this is all very academic.
What we need to do is get us out of the EU, people are trying,'Peoples Pledge' and 'EU Referendum' but the attempts need to be more coordinated,which will include UKIP,the Freedom Assn et al.
Why doesn't the Speccie get involved as the D.Express & Mail have done??

Woody

How truly depressing.

TrevorsDen

The EU has nothing to do with the ECHR.

What Fraser predicts may come to pass but there is no reason why. The bigger issue is the ECHR itself.

If the commission splits and gives 2 reports then what? The mix is 4-3 to the conservatives it seems. But the commission is about a bill of rights not the ECHR. The LDs will have to be careful because if it is kicked into the long grass they may lose their influence entirely in another 5 years. Picking up some populist kudos will be important for them in the next election.

EC

FRASER @ 1:11pm - A NELSON in every respect!

Great article BTW.

Dimoto

This stuff is all for a second (Tory) term.

The priority is financial consolidation, financial consolidation, financial consolidation, with educational and welfare reforms (both slow burners).

The rest is just jaw-jaw.

TomTom

"The EU has nothing to do with the ECHR."

Wrong Trevor. Since Lisbon it does.

Tarka the Rotter

I believe we need a new Grand Remonstrance, something which begins with "We the People, recognising our democracy has been undermined, our rights trampled on and our sovereignty sold abroad, hereby give notice to those elected (and appointed) to Parliament, to those in government, to those in the civil service and those in the judiciary, that we reclaim those rights and reject the authority of those who would negate them..." and so on and so forth. It's the sort of thing we did back in the seventeenth century and should do again.

Verity

I wouldn't recognise Clegg if he came up and shook me by the hand, so why would I care if he has a little coup?

Baron

The dozing one asks a question: “Do you think you could actually lay out which specific parts of the ECHR you object to, and why”.

The lot, because there was nothing wrong with what we had before. You happy with the answer?

sandy

"a decoy,intended to fool the media"

I think you flatter yourself.

A decoy,intended to fool the voters is nearer the truth I'd say

seb

Voters are not going to be impressed in 2015 with a government that has done nothing about immigration and nothing about the EU. The alternative, a Labour Party which many will obviously continue to associate with doing nothing about immigration and nothing about Europe, will not, bizarrely, seem a whole lot more attractive alternative. But its support is uncritical and tribal and may shrink less than support for the coalition parties. Result? Ed 'Numpty' Miliband as PM and a government several times worse even than that of Gordon 'The Moron' Brown.

Cameron does not appear to understand the importance of either issue to the electorate and, instead, concentrates on his narrow agenda of 'doing the right things'. He wants to reduce the deficit. He wants the private sector to grow. He doesn't really care either way about the EU or, probably, about immigration and doesn't care particularly what Clegg, whose party is like Labour in believing that liberalism and progressivism are gifts from on high unto the dopey proles, is up to.

Clegg and the LibDems are almost certainly going to be 'toast' in 2015. Cameron's strategic maladroitness increasingly seems to indicate that he or his party or both might share that fate.

TGF UKIP

Given how you customarily hail defeats for the Conservative Party, Fraser, I am puzzled at the absence of a "VICTORY!" heading for this piece.

But as for your weaselly bit of pro Cameron spin that the Tories were bamboozled into voting for the Equalities act - absolute bollocks. This was and is the Dave n Harriet Equalities Act, wholeheartedly espoused by Dave to polish his right on credentials and enacted enthusiastically by his government.

As for all the hand grenades it contained, Coffeee Housers knew them full well as, indeed, did you, but these were all airily dismissed by your dearly beloved Cam on Marr earlier this year.

Most Coffee Housers long ago got Cameron's number and if you didn't its about high time that you did and started to face up to who and what your dearly beloved Cam really is.

denis cooper

Fraser -

Please can you point out any occasion prior to the general election when Cameron publicly stated that we should, or might have to, or even might have to threaten to, withdraw from the jurisdiction of the Strasbourg court or disapply any of its rulings, or withdraw from the Convention?

I certainly don't recollect any such statement, and having just spent some time searching for one I've only come up with references to the contrary.

Eg this in 2006:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/3625979/Has-Cameron-thought-it-through-or-is-he-just-thinking-aloud.html

"Mr Cameron is not suggesting that Britain should withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights - although some of those around him wanted him to do so. British law would still be open to challenge in Strasbourg, under the Tory plan."

And this again in 2006:

http://www.shepwedd.co.uk/knowledge/article/642-928/a-bill-of-rights-to-replace-the-human-rights-act-/archive/?page=3

"The first potential difficulty with the proposal is that Mr Cameron has stated that he does not intend to withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). This would make the drafting of any Bill of Rights inherently more difficult, as it is the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg that would remain the final arbiter of any human rights case, and it would be applying the ECHR as the benchmark for compliance, not a domestic Bill of Rights."

And in this in 2008:

http://www.justice.gov.uk/news/sp210108.htm

Jack Straw said:

"They propose to repeal the Human Rights Act and replace it with a Bill of Rights parallel to the European Convention ... The Conservatives say, however, that they do not intend to withdraw from the Convention itself ... any UK Bill of Rights which did not incorporate Convention rights could not have a reduced or more heavily qualified set of rights than those currently contained in the ECHR without placing the UK in breach of its international obligations ... "

And this is 2009:

http://www.opendemocracy.net/article/solidity-or-wind-what-s-on-the-menu-in-the-bill-of-rights-debate

restates Cameron's position from 2006.

I'm making a meal of this because you write:

"Nick Clegg has just won a powerful victory over the Conservatives, appointing a Bill of Rights commission which is certain to leave the ECHR intact."

and

"You can bet that Kennedy et al will make sure that any BoR is junior to the ECHR and capable of being overruled by Strasbourg in every respect. In this way, the British Bill of Rights would be a constitutional irrelevance. A decoy, intended to fool the media."

But the fact is that Cameron NEVER intended anything else; is was HIS proposal to just repeal the Human Rights Act while doing NOTHING about the ECHR which was "a decoy, intended to fool the media", and of course fool a poorly-informed electorate.

How can you possibly blame Clegg for frustrating an intention which Cameron never had?

Barbara

This is just a ruse to replace our existing Bill of Rights in order to start remodelling our constitution so it works to Clegg's (ie EU's) liking by 'enshrining' EU principles.
Clegg will not be satisfied until there is nothing of the English constitution left. He is an internationalist, paid to force through internationalist ideas against the will of the people.

Jerry Hayes

This is such uninformed bollocks that it beggars belief. The European Convention was drafted by our lead counsel at Nurenberg, David Maxwell Fife, later lord Kilmuir who, coined the rather daft phrase that the secret weapon of the Conservative party is loyalty. There is nothing wrong with the Convention and it will become obvious that our own Bill of rights would be no different. Where the problem lies is the quality of the judges at EHCR who seem to think that it is within their remit to usurp the function of our sovereign parliament. The Dutch will shortly take over the chair of the council of Europe and are committed to reform. The challenge is to back this reform and put pressure on the 47 signatories.

2trueblue

Cameron is not interested in our views on the EU. Clegg has too much power considering the number of seats the LibDems actually won.