Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

The case for ignoring Strasbourg

If Theresa May loses her job over this kerfuffle over Abu Qatada’s appeals deadline, would anyone in the Cabinet be safe? If you were to rank the blunders this government has made, it wouldn’t even make the top 20. The Home Office is notoriously dysfunctional, and the real surprise is that May has made it thus far with only two or three major skirmishes. It’s fun for her enemies to claim she made a basic mistake, but it’s not clear-cut. In the weird world of European law, the number of days in a three month period can vary depending on things like the estimated postal time between London and Luxembourg. Far simpler if British justice was decided in Britain – precisely what the founders of the European Convention on Human Rights envisaged.

David Cameron has been talking tough, saying he’d like to personally FedEx escort Abu Qatada back to Jordan, etc.

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