Dennis Skinner's angry silence was itself a kind of quip, if that is what you want to call these things. It was duly reported as such, as he knew that it would be. He is no fool. And his bench was correctly occupied by him, Ronnie Campbell, Ian Mearns and Ian Lavery. The SNP can jog on.
The big news from the Queen's Speech was the absence of any proposal to do anything at all about the Human Rights Act. "Consultation, blah blah blah." It has been dropped. Dropped, because Cameron could not get it past his own party. His majority is only about half of even Major's. Watch that space.
Who wields the power on the Conservative benches was evident from the choice of Simon Burns as the old stager to move the Loyal Address.
Burns is a lifelong member of the American Democratic Party (I am not sure how, but he is) who participated in the Presidential campaigns of George McGovern, Ted Kennedy and Hillary Clinton, and who has stated his intention to campaign for Clinton again. Already a longstanding Conservative MP, Burns went to the trouble of campaigning unsuccessfully for Kathleen Kennedy Townsend to be elected as Governor of Maryland in 2002.
With the Privy Council already under his belt, and with his knighthood clearly in the bag, such was the person who was deemed most suitable to move the Loyal Address following the first all-Conservative Queen's Speech in 19 years, with a smiling Ken Clarke sitting in close proximity to him. And the Human Rights Act is staying exactly as it is.
I am not the world's biggest football fan, but even I had to admit that the FIFA story was bigger than this Queen's Speech was. As was the resignation of Tony Blair as Middle East Peace Envoy. Although no one seems to have reported it as such. It was barely treated as any kind of news. How odd. How very, very, very odd.
Our vote on the EU should come first since we can't withdraw from the ECHR (membership of which is a precondition for EU membership) without withdrawing from the EU. As Peter Hitchens points out, a British Bill of Rights is completely unnecessary since we already have one.
ReplyDeleteThe Act is (as Edmund Burke said of the original French version) full of "utopian abstractions"; the practical limits on the power of the state embodied by jury trial, adversarial courts, Habeas Corpus,an unlicensed press, inviolability of private property, a ban on standing armies, detention without charge, extrajudicial fines or double jeopardy, and the citizens freedom to bear arms are the only proper guarantees of the aspirations contained in the Act.
"Rights" are just vague airy-fairy Leftwing piffle that mean anything activist judges want them to mean and don't actually offer any real freedom.
Which of New Labour's assaults on civil liberties did the Human Rights Act ever prevent? Does Porrtugal and Romania and Greece offer fair trials because they've signed this piffle?
Well, there you are then. We should scrap these Continental abstractions and restore the British guarantees of liberty which worked for centuries before human rights lawyers came along.
Bless.
DeleteIt's over. It's not going to happen. The Whips' idea of the most distinguished backbencher is a man with a picture of Hillary Clinton on his watch.
Cameron isn't even bothering with a coalition in order to drop these things. He is just dropping them, anyway. And dropping the people who wanted 20, 30 or 40 UKIP MPs with them.
It's not going to happen. It's over.
Bless.
The EU referendum is coming and withdrawal is the precondition to our abolition of the Act.
ReplyDeleteAbolishing it first would have been the wrong way round.
Now in 2017-or possibly earlier-we'll all see who the real patriots are.
Is that what you have managed to tell yourself?
DeleteThere are easily enough Conservative MPs to block this, including a former Chief Whip who made a speech against it during yesterday's Queen's Speech debate (read that over until it sinks in).
No chance. Not a chance at all.