Human rights and a broken promise

Not content with perpetually insulting common sense, common justice and our common law over the years, the European Court of Human Rights is now interfering in America’s affairs.

When this country signed the European Human Rights Convention in 1950, it was a backstop to prevent the kind of outrageous breaches of basic standards of behaviour seen in the then recent war.

But today the Convention has become a busybody’s charter, allowing unelected and frankly far from impressive European judges awesome powers.

Now those judges have decreed that it may not be possible to extradite the hate preacher Abu Hamza from Britain to the U.S. on terror charges, because he might face ‘inhuman or degrading treatment’.

By which they mean that, if convicted, he is likely to spend the rest of his life in a not particularly cushy jail.

To most of us, that would be regarded as a triumph for the U.S. judicial system, and absolutely nothing to do with Mr Hamza’s human rights whatsoever.

All this is further proof that Britain must repeal the Human Rights Act. Mr Cameron promised the electorate that he would do this.

To his eternal shame, he has now dropped the pledge to appease his Liberal partners.


(2010-07-09/Daily)