The government has this afternoon published this:
This statement in the preamble to this Bill is astonishing:
So, human rights no longer matter in UK law-making.
And then clause 2 imposes these staggering requirements:
So, black is now ruled by law to be white. Opinion is now law. Objective facts no longer matter. The suspension of reality has itself become law.
And if there is any doubt as to our right to object, Clause 3 says:
Any semblance that the UK might now be considered a liberal country, let alone a liberal democracy that is governed in accordance with the rule of law, has now been totally abandoned.
This is full-on fascist law intended for the sole purpose of deliberately victimising some in society whose rights to object to being treated in that way are being removed in law. The time when we can pretend otherwise has now passed. From now on we must live at the whim of our rulers. Unless we can get rid of them, that is.
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Makes me wonder if the Tories will create a national emergency to stop elections being held.
Probably a far-fetched idea, but the more I see what they’re doing, the more likely it becomes.
The Government has now ruled itself to be above the law.
Prior to the Gaza conflict, Netanyahu was attempting to do the same thing; 100,000 people took to the streets for months to protest.
The country is disintegrating. The very fabric of our public services is literally falling down and the people who are needed to keep us alive, teach our children, care for our disabled and vulnerable are disappearing in droves.
Legislation is being pushed through the House to give the Government access to the private bank accounts of those in receipt of benefits like pension credits. Banks will be ordered to permit it. We will not be told if that has happened. This is to “prevent fraud”.
Our private health data is now to be compulsorily uploaded to Palantir, the US company linked to the CIA.
Next to go will be the ECHR. Then the GFA collapses. We are already in contravention of a number of UN Conventions. We may as well formally withdraw from those too, as in practice we ignore them.
It is shameful. It is a disgrace. But most of all, it is terrifying.
I gather Sunak’s just this morning announced we’re leaving the ECHR. I regard him as a weak man trying to impress his (by some accounts) psychotic father-in-law. Chaos looms..
He did not say that, precisely
This is what starving public services of funding enables – it’s as simple as that.
Rwanda have said that they’re pulling out if UK intends to break international law. Robert Jenrick has resigned.
Does anyone seriously think that the House of Lords will let this Bill through?
I suspect it is general election time…..
Yes, can see it coming. The Lords block it and its ’enemies of the people’ time again so they call an election with that as the excuse.
Stirring up trouble over immigration is all they have left.
Agreed
…and I suspect it’s Day1 of ‘The End’. That could mean many things, of which ‘The End’ might be the end of Sunak as PM, the end of the Conservative Party as it tears itself asunder and the end of democracy in the UK as it embraces full-fat Fascism. It could also mean ‘The End’ of the UK since the Bill as presented and the underlying immigration policy are the direct opposite of what Scotland and the vast majority of its people need and want. As John Warren has pointed out this is an existential matter for Scotland.
There is also the ever-increasing gulf between Tory Government policies on an array of topics and the views and desires of the majority of Scots. It also becomes clearer by the day that, in the UK as currently constituted, the devolved nations get a very lop-sided “deal” – you may govern but you can have no control over economic matters, fiscal matters and our Westminster Parliament and our Supreme Court can overrule any laws you pass. If this truly is the beginning of ‘The End’ of the UK, the irony is that an independent Scotland may well be better prepared to reach a stable state than whatever remains of the UK. Scotland during its “devolved years” has spent a great deal of energy in mitigating the worst of Tory policies and planning how the organs of state should function (cf Tim Rideout’s work on a Central Bank and numerous outlines for a Constitution). This is not to say that it would be easy – far from it – but we do have a clear-cut understanding of the faults and weaknesses of the UK model that currently constrains us and which must not be repeated.
Very largely agreed Ken
“Robert Jenrick has resigned.”
In my ignorance I thought “Good, someone has taken a principled stand.”
But no, apparently he resigned because the bill “does not go far enough.”
I despair.
I can’t believe somebody like ‘Honest Bob’ Jenrick has managed to rehabilitate any sort of a political career which should surely have been over the instant he started unlawfully doing deals to save wealthy donors tens of millions of pounds in tax.
The fact that he’s now grandstanding a resignation makes it appear to me that he believes he is going to be a big cheese in the Tory party in the future! The man puts the V into Vermin.
He’ll probably end up as Lord Jenrick, putting the ermin in vermin as well. (I’ll get my coat)
Can’t the lords put off every law for a year, which means there will be no laws put through by the tories from now on. Unless you count Starmer as a tory.
Truly shocking.
Any thoughts that things couldn’t get worse are out of the window.
There’s the Tory party tearing itself apart right in front of us over immigration, just as long ago predicted, I seem to recall. I wonder what the morrow will bring?
Nick Robinson telling Braverman on R4Today what he really thought of her this am was a treat.
I have tweeted it
The Tories know that this pig isn’t going to fly, but that’s not the main objective of the Rwandan fiasco. In reality it’s just pure distraction writ large. What are they not telling us? Home Office officials have admitted they do not know the whereabouts of more than 17,000 asylum seekers whose claims have been discontinued -.29 Nov 2023. They came here to find work and you can bet they are all working, overworked, underpaid, exploited, but working. In addition it is highly likely that most of those awaiting a decision are trying to find work too, illegal work as they are not legally permitted to work.
Now, if you ignore the distraction of Rwanda, all the fuss over small boats, the asylum seekers on barges and those costly hotels paid for out of the foreign aid budget, it’s possible to see what the real Tory immigration agenda is: dirt cheap, slave labour! Legal and illegal migrants that will compliantly put up with poor conditions and long hours of work for abysmal pay as they strive for a better life. This helps the Tories to keep UK wages low and is ultimately their tool to break the unions. The most important priority of Brexit was to eliminate EU workers who had the same rights as UK workers. Welcome to feudal Britain.
The country now going back in time under the Tories to the days of treacherous and tyrannical King John (reigned 1199 to 1216). See historian Marc Morris’s book ” King John: Treachery, Tyranny and the Road to the Magna Carta”
I am appalled, sad and so very very angry that the government and all its machinations can even think to deliver something so disgusting and undemocratic. Please can they leave now.
Is this not just perverting the course of justice? Which, I believe, is still a crime.
Not if parliament says otherwise….
I understand that but in this instance there is a clear attempt to handicap the courts by deliberately excluding evidence. It would set a very dangerous precedent. As you said – full on facist!
There is however a pattern of successive, recent Tory governments attacking the judiciary and setting out to overturn decisions and laws that do not fit with their ideology. Combined with politicisation of the civil service
All put together, distinctly undemocratic
I am quite relieved that the lethal incompetence, malice and ignorance that caused massive excess deaths from 2010 onwards has so far ensured that a Reichstag Fire moment has not been created. I think that moment passed when their ideologies made them downplay COVID – too busy lining mate’s pockets – instead of levering a permanent state of emergency. They still have the weaponry but not unified leadership, and the array of opponents grows, despite Labour’s passivity.
The greatest worry for me is that USA far-right organisations, embedded here via Tufton St and other groupings, will provide the money and the blueprint to subvert the UK as they are doing in the USA.
Right now we need a party with socialist policies and proper economic nous. I wish!
What next? They pass legislation to declare their belief that the moon is made of cheese cannot be disputed and that anyone who doesn’t agree will be sent to Rwanda?
A rocky road indeed.
From… ‘Public Law for Everyone’…..
The Rwanda Bill and its constitutional implications
(last paragraph)
Ultimately, the Rwanda Bill is as parochial as it is hypocritical. It is parochial in the sense that it proceeds on the basis of the sleight of hand that the UK Parliament, because it is sovereign, can somehow free the Government from its international legal obligations. But this is to conflate the sovereignty of the UK Parliament in domestic law with the UK’s sovereignty on the international plane as a State. It is precisely in exercise of its State sovereignty that the UK can enter, and has entered, into binding treaty obligations. The peculiarity that the UK’s Parliament, as a matter of domestic law, is sovereign in the sense of being (in orthodoxy, at least) beyond judicial control cuts no ice whatever on the international level. Meanwhile, the Bill reveals an astounding level of hypocrisy in the sense that it is premised on a policy that presupposes that Rwanda will honour its obligations in international law while demonstrating that the UK is prepared to breach its own obligations. It follows that the Rwanda Bill, and the policy to which it seeks to give effect, is ultimately a smoke-and-mirrors exercise that promises something which, as a matter of legal fact, it simply cannot deliver.
Full article at…
https://publiclawforeveryone.com/2023/12/06/the-rwanda-bill-and-its-constitutional-implications/
Thanks
07/12 6PM BBC News: Lord Garnier KC, Former Solicitor General, and a member of the so-called ‘One Nation Tory Caucus’ put it most succinctly when he told the BBC of his ridicule of the approach taken by Rishi Sunak with the bill he hopes to ram through parliament. He said: “It’s rather like a bill that has decided that all dogs are cats, but we know that all dogs are not cats. But, we are being told that parliament has reached a conclusion that Rwanda is safe, when the evidence before the Supreme Court, and the Courts below it was that it wasn’t.”
Year right Richi “All dogs are cats;” make that pig fly! I have this intrusive mental picture of Rishi Sunak in the cockpit of a plane, taking flying lessons, determined to get those ‘Illegal Migrant’ Asylum Seekers to Rwanda no matter who tries to stop him. It is a really pathetic specticle.