Would you vote Tory if Kemi Badenoch was Tory the party leader and the election was tomorrow?

Where we are is extreme.

If nothing else you can see what the supporters of this would like. The implications are extreme- and of course, they would support Badenoch et Al

Ultimately what you have is a movement to rule by bureaucrats, people with a certain kind of education and background. That's not to say bad people, necessarily, but it's very narrow, and I'm not convinced that bureaucrats and their kinds of institutions have ever offered the best kind of government.

It seems like an elitist system, and with a kind of way to "cheat" democracy: "We are just protecting human rights".

Now pretty much everyone can agree that there are real human rights violations like an authoritarian regime torturing people, or where the right to a fair trial isn't being protected.

But a lot of the "human rights" claims may be highly controversial and basically without any evidence that could persuade anyone. It's like going back to ruling over a society with, "my god gave these commands and everyone has to follow them".

Lobbying for "human rights" can just be a way to push your own politics and not having to bother about democracy. Authoritarian behaviour can dress itself up as virtuous.

For me, to strengthen women’s rights and move away from male led gender ideology

Also to deal with an incoming issue of mass displacement that I think will strain post war institutions

So women and citizens become higher priority

@fearfuloffluff - yes thank you

What would be the point of dropping ECHR if not to diminish the rights given under it?

Not every country that scores highly on human rights is part of an out of country institution on rights

@bombastix This isn't to say that no international bodies should exist, or are necessary to deal with certain kinds of issues. But when they start to have a kind of power that means that national legislative bodies can't make the decisions that their people want, that their choices for effectively or creatively dealing with problems are shut down, or just that they are told that something the population really doesn't agree with must be the case. Ultimately what you have is a movement to rule by bureaucrats, people with a certain kind of education and background. That's not to say bad people, necessarily, but it's very narrow, and I'm not convinced that bureaucrats and their kinds of institutions have ever offered the best kind of government.

This is exactly why ECHR is needed, and needs to be international. Because abuse of human rights is perpetrated by the executive - if they make a decision that breaches the human rights of citizens, that is held to be illegal and struck down by the courts. That's literally the point.

Otherwise a government could decide that, for example, Romany people have to only live in certain reservations and can't park up where they like. The population may well support that, it would probably be a popular policy but it would also be a breach of their human rights that could basically confine them to prison camps.

And don't get me started on suspicion of elites, bureaucrats etc which usually means people who have an education and stick to fundamental principles of fairness instead of going along with populist nonsense.

Gosh MN please delete the offending word if it concerns you. It is a matter of historical fact however.

And as to the point of scrapping the ECHR to bring in a 'British bill of rights' when the ECHR was drafted by Britain with Churchill's involvement - stupid and ignorant. Human rights are eternal, you can't chip away at them because you find them inconvenient.

This adds up to saying you don't believe in the rule of law. Which is fascist. The alternative to rule of law is tyranny and being unable to challenge the executive.

Judges are there to judge - yes, it's subjective to some extent because each case is individual and they sometimes find a way to apply the law that reflects their sympathies.

BUT they are bound by precedent and if a judge that goes off on one and makes a ruling which contradicts previous rulings, the parties could appeal, and then appeal again until it reaches the Supreme Court, which gives a ruling that all subsequent cases are bound by.

A lot of newspaper coverage of ECHR is completely mendacious, reporting that someone can't be deported because they have a cat or are gay etc. These things might be mentioned as one of many elements that mean someone has a settled life here, that would be one of thousands of elements of evidence in a case but gets picked up on by newspapers.

The Daily Mail coverage of eg the ruling on prorogation of parliament, which held the government had acted illegally, was completely unacceptable, attacking judges on a personal basis.

The point of a trial is to examine all the evidence and come to a rounded decision based in legislation and legal precedent. It's wrong to conclude a decision is 'dodgy' when you don't know either the finer points of law, or all the information.

Nope! But I’d only vote for the Tory party if the alternative was Hitler.

Ultimately what you have is a movement to rule by bureaucrats, people with a certain kind of education and background. That's not to say bad people, necessarily, but it's very narrow, and I'm not convinced that bureaucrats and their kinds of institutions have ever offered the best kind of government.

That pretty much sums up the EU

Very good post

I appreciated reading that. It’s less about the last line for me but the argument that people are less represented is a strong one

On the general posts that bad things will happen if we, like many other countries, would be outside the ECHR don’t stand up as much to the fact that bad things happening now. We are not far off a dystopian novel with some of the unbelievable leaps institutions use to protect lies.

Who said that brilliant thing about institutions under threat saving themselves when based on a lie. It was on here, I’ll see if I can recall

For "dodgy decisions" I mean things like:

(1) It's not clearly in the law, but just supposed to be implied by it.
(2) Courts can reach completely opposite decisions depending on the individual judges at the time. So these decisions have a strong element of subjectivity, in some cases.
(3) The personal politics or morals of the judges could easily be influencing their decisions in some cases.

So you end up with decisions, that aren't clearly the law in an objective sense, that may be politically biased, and that very possibly aren't real "human rights", and indeed they may be violating people's rights.

And while judges could do all this by accident, it's also possible that a judge could be self aware that they were bending the law for political reasons.

is that not a very reductive argument? That simply because a government determined to be outside the ECHR means it is no value?

My argument in that case was to give an example of why it was far from a perfect system.

My point being, no system is going to be perfect, and you need to realistically look at the issues and limitations of the ECHR, if you want to argue it's a good system, or better than alternatives.

Maybe not you, but some people may have this simplistic idea that, "our rights aren't protected without the ECHR".

No. I don't trust her. She seems like all the other Tories. I used to vote Tory because they used to be half-decent people, back in the day, intelligent and practical, but now they're all self-serving weasels and the party is a total shit show. I'd like to lock them all up. I'm not a big fan of Starmer either so I too am homeless atm until Labour or the Lib Dems sort themselves out. The only politician I have been consistently impressed with on Question Time is Lisa Nandy, although I don't agree with her about TWAW. But I'd vote for Labour if she were their leader because she seems honest, knowledgeable, experienced and decent - not something that can be said about many of them these days.

Hmm, I am not sure whether being Bennite is a compliment or not...

Anyway, my point is this - ultimately you can't escape the possibility of the people making the decisions, whether in your own nation or external to it, making grave errors about truth. Human nature in an international organization is not fundamentally different than human nature in a national organization. And ultimately, for decisions and rulings at an international level to be instantiated nationally, they will have in some sense to be acceptable to the nation. There already has to be an appetite or recognition for the principles they are upholding. If there isn't, there will only be increasing problems.There's no reason, inherently, that a European institution has more moral authority than a British one, or is more likely to get things right.

This isn't to say that no international bodies should exist, or are necessary to deal with certain kinds of issues. But when they start to have a kind of power that means that national legislative bodies can't make the decisions that their people want, that their choices for effectively or creatively dealing with problems are shut down, or just that they are told that something the population really doesn't agree with must be the case. Ultimately what you have is a movement to rule by bureaucrats, people with a certain kind of education and background. That's not to say bad people, necessarily, but it's very narrow, and I'm not convinced that bureaucrats and their kinds of institutions have ever offered the best kind of government.

Labour have not always acted well, but lead by Starmer they are pragmatic and are not the greens/libdems/SNP who make promises on the basis that they don’t have to take responsibility. A party in government is not the same as a party in opposition.

SNP/Greens are the parties of government in Scotland

Maggie Chapman is a Green MSP loon. No one voted for her. Her name did not even appear on the constituency list. But the Green Party decided to put her top of their list for that region. 6% of voters in the region voted Green (NOT for Maggie Chapman) and she now is a MSP in the Scottish Government. Does she have any interest in what her constituents think? Of course not, she was appointed by the party and her loyalty is to them and their misogynistic batshit policies.

MPs rebel in parliament because they are there as independent MPs each representing their constituents. If they represented parties we could almost do away with MPs and just give parties different numbers of votes. If the governing parties have a majority you could almost get rid of parliament entirely. Which is pretty much what has happened in Scotland.

Why do you ask? I've researched before voting in every elect and have yet to think Tory is the best option. This time around seems a whole new level of no.

No. This is a women’s rights issue (and with a few honourable exceptions - back benchers who spoke out early) the Tories are only interested in the culture war.

Labour have not always acted well, but lead by Starmer they are pragmatic and are not the greens/libdems/SNP who make promises on the basis that they don’t have to take responsibility. A party in government is not the same as a party in opposition. The Conservatives were very hung ho on self ID until the legislative problems became obvious.

I don't understand?

Those parties are voted in by voters, who else? in the 2015 GE, Ukip got over 3m votes, yet had no representation in parliament, same goes for the Green Party.

Or despite getting just a few 100k votes more than May, Boris Johnson got an 80 seat majority (May had none)

there is a very good reason why almost no one in Europe uses FPTP

Very true.

I saw this with Brexit and we know how that ended up.....

I have people I know who are well educated who literally do just sweep aside all concerns of people in areas disproportionately affected by immigration (and often also poverty) as 'racist' whilst enjoying their nice middle class lives.

It's breathtakingly tribalistic and truly bigoted in the real meaning of the word - simply dismissing a massive group of people just because they voted for Brexit / have concerns about immigration with absolutely no interest in finding out why or considering that they might have good reasons. Essentially the thinking is that they're 'lessers'. Not going to convince anyone with that superior attitude and it's not that far on the slippery slope from thinking that people with such inferior attitudes shouldn't be allowed to vote.

Of course, which is why we have a Court of appeal, the High court, the Supreme court, to correct mistakes made, a case in the ECHR has almost certainly gone through domestic courts first.

But voting in a Judge into position will not take away the bias of a judge, in fact as we see in the USA, we could end up with huge political bias.