"Human rights" lawfare acts as useful idiots for terrorist

Melanie Phillips:

Human rights fall squarely into the category of motherhood and apple pie. Who could be against them? No-one is going to argue, are they, in favour of oppression, tyranny or bigotry.

That’s what makes the problem of human rights law so difficult for politicians to deal with. And it is a big problem, because in practice it has turned our most fundamental values on their heads.

It has stopped us from deporting terrorists and extremists, forcing us to accommodate people who are a danger to the state. It has tied the police up in knots and been on the side of those who do wrong, from illegal immigrants to criminals cocking a snook at justice and milking the system for compensation.

And it has given the judges a licence to stray into the political arena and impose their own prejudices on a host of deeply divisive issues which they have no democratic mandate to decide.

All this was given a tremendous boost by the Human Rights Act, which was sported as the brightest feather in the Government’s radical cap. More than that, human rights law is a veritable article of faith (and rich pickings) for the many lawyers at the core of New Labour.

Now, however, even Mr Blair seems to be dismayed by its perverse effects — or perhaps it is more accurate to say that he is dismayed by the mounting outrage among voters, who are horrified by the way it is thwarting attempts to deal with crime and protect this country against terrorism.

But because human rights are so totemic, he refuses to repeal his own law — not least because we would still be signed up to the European Convention on Human Rights, and so English law could still be overturned as a consequence of rulings made by the Strasbourg court.

...

The Euros and the Brits have tied themselves into knots while letting the bad guys go in the name of human rights. That is how the earned the title of human rights wackos. Like enviromental wackos, they take a good cause to extremes that defy common sense. Both groups should suffer the political consequences of the mess they have made. They have polluted the courts with their extremism and it is time to clean up their mess.