At last – are we about to wield an axe against the grasping tentacles of the European Octopus?
MPs have overwhelmingly voted to keep the ban on prisoners voting, in defiance of a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights.
The House of Commons’ decision is not binding, but could put pressure on ministers to go against the Strasbourg court’s decision.
Tory MP David Davis summed up the view of the vast majority of British people (outside the upper reaches of the BBC and, of course, the Guardian reading chattering classes of North London)
He told MPs that while prisoners had rights – such as the right to be fed and protected from harm – and they should not enjoy the same rights as “free British citizens”.
When receiving a jail sentence, they “sacrificed” rights such as their liberty and freedom of association and the right to vote should be removed as well.
“The concept is simple. If you break the law, you cannot make the law,” he told MPs.
Even in UK legal circles there is a growing resentment at what some see as a blatant attempt by the European Court of Human Rights which is based in Strasbourg. Many of the 47 judges are academics who have little or no experience actually running courts. They are also mainly grounded in a bureacratic and regulatory legal regime totally out of sync with the common sense approach of English Common Law.
A recent report summed up everything that is wrong with the ECHR
the UK has become “subservient” to the Strasbourg court………. it also ignores the traditional British freedom of the press.
The report claims the 47 Strasbourg judges have “virtually no democratic legitimacy” and are poorly qualified compared to Britain’s own senior judges.
Lord Hoffman, a former Law Lord, who wrote the foreword to the report, said Strasbourg has “taken upon itself an extraordinary power to micromanage the legal systems of the member states”.
In 1649 we cut off a king’s head as an assertion of the Sovereignty of Parliament – time, perhaps, to sharpen that axe again?
