What has a blasphemy law ever achieved? There was one in England and Wales until 2008, there was one in Scotland until 2024 (yes, last year), and there is one in Northern Ireland to this day. To what effect? Rather, the success of Hamit Coskun’s appeal was a good result against the Public Order Act 1986. Who was the Prime Minister in 1986? A couple of years later, her supporters wanted to use that very Act to prosecute people who had set fire to copies of The Satanic Verses. They are very recent converts to free speech, and very selective about it.
See also the Supreme Court ruling about the legal definition of sex. Yesterday, it was the actual news in this country that you would henceforth have to be a girl to be a Girl Guide. Today, it is the actual news in this country that you will henceforth have to be a woman to be in the Women’s Institute. Both organisations have made no bones about the fact that they were complying under duress, and the view that that ruling merely permitted, but did not require, compliance with biological reality is the position of Lord Sumption, whom the populist Right practically canonised during the lockdowns, but who has now also come out in support of the assault on trial by jury. Think on.
Where and when has Lord Sumption supported Labour’s abolition of jury trials, (opposed by Reform and the Conservatives)? I can find absolutely no reference to it anywhere online. And the link you posted doesn’t work. I don’t believe a word of it.
ReplyDeleteSumption himself opposes gender ideology but he’s right that the ludicrous Supreme Court is no ally of rightwing conservatism on this or anything else.
The link does work. It is an article by Sumption in support of Lammy.
DeleteNot for the first time, Peter Tatchell was invoking Sumption on GB News tonight. Perfectly accurately.
Sumption's a leading legal expert so of course he's invoked by others on matters of law such as Supreme Court rulings. Peter Tatchell is a big fan of Jeremy Corbyn, by the way, whose last manifesto as Labour leader remains the only one by any major party to pledge gender self-declaration (in 2019).
ReplyDeleteThink on, as we say.
Tatchell is certainly not a big fan of Corbyn.
DeleteWhy did he back him for the Labour leadership then?
ReplyDeletehttps://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/im-backing-jeremy-corbyn-for-labour-leadership-despite-his-unsavoury-frien/
That article was hardly a glowing endorsement, and it was written 10 years ago.
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