Be that as it may, I want to focus this morning on the new Bill of Rights published recently by Dominic Raab.
I see several eminent commentators are pointing out that the bill does nothing to change Britain's position with regard to the European Convention on Human Rights or the ECHR court which oversees it. The bill fiddles with the way UK courts are allowed to interpret human rights but anyone will still be able to enforce their rights by going directly to Strasbourg. It will just take longer and cost a lot more.
The best description is HERE by Mark Elliott, Professor of Public Law and Chair of the Faculty of Law at the University of Cambridge.
He says, the Bill of Rights Bill is "an example of Boris Johnson’s ‘cakeist’ philosophy — which extols the merits of both having one’s cake and eating it — writ large. The UK, we are told, remains fully committed to the ECHR and the Supreme Court is lauded as the ultimate judicial authority when it comes to rights questions. The reality, however, is very different. Once the political hubris is stripped away and the Bill is examined through a legal lens, the metaphysical infeasibility of cakeism becomes all too apparent and the Bill of Rights can be seen for what it is: a piece of legislation that the Government claims enhances human rights protection but which in fact significantly diminishes it."
It is as if they want to give the impression that the changes are far reaching, freeing British judges from anything continental sounding, when in practice it does nothing of the kind. Elliot goes on:
"The legal problem, however, is that the Bill rests on a false premise — namely, that it is possible to legislate domestically in order somehow to manipulate or magic away treaty obligations that are binding upon the UK as a matter of international law."
It strikes me that this is precisely what the government is in the process of doing with Brexit.
They want to make it appear that Britain has become sovereign and therefore able to do things completely differently after Brexit while trying to persuade others that little will change. It is indeed cakeism.
Jacob Rees- Mogg appears to have given up completely on coming up with any great legislative changes which might put a post-Brexit spring in Britain's productivity step and has thrown the question open to the general public. Even the ideas that The Sun and Daily Express readers have given him seem to have been dismissed.
Through the EU Retained Law Public Dashboard you can see in real time how many EU laws have been repealed or changed and JRM is encouraging ordinary people to submit specific regulations they want to see amended, replaced or repealed. Don't hold your breath.
How many of us know enough about EU law to submit any ideas at all?
I think over the next few years we will see a lot of very minor tinkering with EU regulations that will (a) make UK-EU trade harder (b) add unnecessary costs to UK business and (c) leave people wondering what Brexit was supposed to be about.
The government is doing to Brexit what it is doing to the ECHR. A distinction with little difference
There will be more bureaucracy, more hassle, more costs with no perceptible gain other than being able to say we're different.
As Elliot says,
"If the Government’s view is that the ECHR is a bad system, or that involving judges in the protection of human rights is inherently objectionable, it should have the courage of its convictions and say so. I happen to disagree with both of those views, but for the Government to advance one or both of them would at least have the merit of intellectual honesty."
But that's the problem isn't it? They have no intellectual honesty which is why they have to employ so many convoluted arguments on the ECHR and Brexit which more often than not simply make no economic or practical sense.
And if they ever were intellectually honest, would they leave the ECHR? It's not impossible. A decade ago nobody seriously foresaw the UK leaving the EU.
Could NATO be next?
Despite Johnson’s protestations we seem to be headed for autarky.
