Andrew Tettenborn is a professor of law at Swansea Law School
When a pressure group moves from promoting the rights of a minority to trying to micromanage the behaviour of the majority, we should be worried. When large numbers of organisations in both the public and private sectors dance to the tune of that body, we should be more so. Stonewall is a case in point,
Sex offences, violence and fraud have spiked, according to the latest crime figures. Meanwhile, the number of convictions remains staggeringly low: in England and Wales, more than 99 per cent of rapes reported to police do not end in a conviction. In short, there’s plenty for the police to get on with. Yet worryingly, officers are sometimes kept busy
Yesterday Suella Braverman unequivocally stated that, as Prime Minister, she would work to withdraw Britain from the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). The reaction she encountered on social media was, of course, predictable. To say she was portrayed as a right-wing nut-job, a kind of amalgam of Cruella de Vil and Josiah Bounderby, Dickens’s
Last Thursday saw a wry twist to the Ukraine war. The European Court of Human Rights solemnly intoned that Russia should stop the execution of two Englishmen condemned to death in the Donetsk People’s Republic for fighting for Ukraine. It knew perfectly well it was screaming into the void. Russia, though technically in the ECHR
As if the Church of England didn’t have enough to worry about with leaky roofs, empty churches and lack of money to pay priests, it now has the Archbishops’ Commission for Racial Justice, or ACRJ. Appointed a year ago, this group of twelve of the great and good, under ex-Labour Cabinet minister Paul Boateng, has
Progressive outrage greeted this week’s US Supreme Court majority decision which overturned Roe v. Wade. ‘Extreme ideology,’ thundered Joe Biden. It was ‘a huge blow to women’s human rights’ according to Michelle Bachelet at the UN; a case of ‘back to the Middle Ages,’ in the view of one melodramatic performer at Glastonbury. These are understandable views. But
The EU will formally add Ukraine to its list of candidate countries this Friday. But if you look carefully beneath the pomp, you will see this is much less of a big deal than Brussels would have you believe. For one thing, the gesture is symbolic. The list of official EU candidates is a bit
Last night’s abrupt order from the European Court of Human Rights that led to the grounding of the first Rwanda deportation flight delighted progressives everywhere. They will of course say – rather in the fashion of twentieth-century home secretaries calmly refusing to reprieve a condemned murderer – that the law is merely taking its course,
Conservatives in Wales are jumpy. Seeing Boris’s name as poisonous on the doorstep, a number of them have suggested disaffiliating from the national party and forming their own Welsh Conservatives as the party of the right west of Offa’s Dyke. Some in the central party in London are, perhaps unsurprisingly, aghast: one unnamed Tory MP has
Boris Johnson insists that his victory in last night’s confidence vote means he will be able to ‘draw a line under issues our opponents want to talk about’. But what the result actually shows, as Boris undoubtedly knows, is that even some of those who backed him in the vote now want him gone. Why? Shortly after the
Should MPs be allowed second jobs? In the wake of last year’s Owen Paterson scandal, in which it was revealed the Tory MP had breached lobbying rules, there was a clamour to clamp down on Parliamentarians’ outside income. The Commons Standards Committee toyed with the idea of placing some restriction on the time MPs could spend on extra-Parliamentary
A couple of weeks ago Ursula von der Leyen portentously announced a further package of EU sanctions against Russia – the sixth, in case you had lost count. No doubt an underling immediately told Vladimir Putin. Most likely, that adviser will have been waved away; Vladimir has more important matters to think about. Much of
Amnesty International and Stonewall are no strangers to criticising the government. This week they’ve been at it again: blasting Dominic Raab’s plans to make adjustments to the Human Rights Act by replacing it with a British Bill of Rights. But they are wrong to attack an approach that most Brits will realise is perfectly sensible. Raab’s
If there was a word in Euro-speak for ‘Move on, nothing to see here,’ the EU would undoubtedly have used it in its announcement yesterday about Hungary. Brussels has formally notified Budapest that it is invoking the so-called ‘conditionality mechanism’ against it, meaning a supermajority within the EU can vote to withhold funds from a
Priti Patel’s reforms to the rights of asylum seekers have predictably scandalised the House of Lords. Befitting what is now effectively a club for patricians and liberals who hate Boris Johnson, it duly sent her Nationality and Borders Bill back badly mauled. The Commons excised these amendments in short order; today, the Lords will be asked
Journalists rarely had it so easy as when it came to writing up the final result of the French presidential election on Monday morning. The copy almost wrote itself: the triumph of moderation, demonstrated by a convincing win for centrist Emmanuel Macron over his far-right challenger Marine Le Pen; the clear defeat of disruptive extremist
As the French Presidentielle hots up for the final vote on Sunday week, both Macron and Le Pen are fighting bitterly for the support of the erstwhile supporters of the left-winger Mélenchon who came a very respectable third in last Sunday’s poll. From the great and the good, who detest Le Pen, there is a
Since the Ukraine conflict erupted, the EU has had a great deal to say about its sympathy for Ukraine as a brother European state. But if you look closely it has not actually done a great deal to derail Vladimir Putin’s war machine. Even the grisly discoveries at Bucha has wrought little change. Not surprisingly,
The scale of Viktor Orbán’s victory in the Hungarian election overnight has taken even his supporters by surprise. Against many predictions, Orbán has actually improved his position: he has retained for his Fidesz party the two-thirds parliamentary majority necessary to override certain constitutional challenges to change a number of constitutional rules. Progressive opinion, in and out of
Sometimes old grievances are best laid to rest. That was certainly the view of Tony Blair when his government issued nearly 200 ‘comfort letters’ to Irish nationalist gunmen in the wake of the Good Friday Agreement. But a decision by the Northern Ireland High Court on Wednesday will upend that principle, setting back years of compromise and reconciliation.
