Off Topic The Politics Thread

  • Please bear with us on the new site integration and fixing any known bugs over the coming days. If you can not log in please try resetting your password and check your spam box. If you have tried these steps and are still struggling email [email protected] with your username/registered email address
  • Log in now to remove adverts - no adverts at all to registered members!

Should the UK remain a part of the EU or leave?

  • Stay in

    Votes: 56 47.9%
  • Get out

    Votes: 61 52.1%

  • Total voters
    117
  • Poll closed .
The AfD is a right leaning, populist eurosceptic party, Stainsey. It is not a fascist party, and if it was, it would be banned in Germany. It is against mass immigration but that isn't an extreme view. Fascist philosophy calls for dictatorial rule such as we see in Belorussia or Russia. Farage is a million miles from that.

Yep they're lovely people. The real enemies are the trans lot and those evil retired teachers/hippies protesting against climate change <grr><grr>
 
  • Like
Reactions: qprbeth
In pure and utter desperation (and to persuade Farage not to set out against them, presumably), the Tories are considering Son of Brexit - a referendum on leaving the ECHR in order to 'Get Rwanda Done'. Brilliant.
 
seems its ok sometimes

UK government cites rights convention in legal battle with Covid inquiry
Lawyers argue request for unredacted WhatsApps breaches article 8 of European convention often maligned by Tories

Haroon Siddique Legal affairs correspondentFri 30 Jun 2023 18.12 BST


Government lawyers have sought to rely on the European convention on human rights – maligned by many Conservatives – to avoid having to hand over unredacted files to the Covid inquiry.

At an unprecedented high court challenge to the demand by the inquiry chair, Lady Heather Hallett, for documents that include the entire WhatsApp history of Boris Johnson and a former No 10 aide, Henry Cook, James Eadie KC argued it would “breach article 8 rights”.

In written arguments, the government’s advocate said: “Article 8 … prohibits unnecessary or disproportionate intrusion into an individual’s private and family life. The protection of personal data is of fundamental importance to the right under article 8 … In the context of judicial proceedings, the European court of human rights has found violations of article 8 where a domestic court has included sensitive personal information within its judgment which was not ‘rendered strictly necessary by the specific features of the proceedings and by the facts of the case’.”

Conservatives including the home secretary, Suella Braverman, and the former deputy prime minister Dominic Raab have long mooted leaving the convention. On Thursday there were renewed calls to do so after the decision in the Rwanda deportations case.

The court of appeal ruled on Thursday that the plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda to have their claims processed was unlawful because it breached article 3 of the convention, which prohibits torture and inhuman or degrading treatment. In response, the former cabinet minister Simon Clarke suggested the UK should “revisit the question of our membership”.

Sir Edward Leigh, the veteran backbencher, demanded a “derogation” from the convention. Replying, Braverman said Leigh “makes a very powerful point” and criticised the European court of human rights, which interprets the convention and halted the first attempt at sending a flight to Rwanda, for having operated in a way that was “opaque, irregular and unfair when it comes to the will of the British people”.

Article 8 has been a particular bugbear, with the likes of Raab claiming it is unfairly relied on by foreign criminals to avoid deportation.

In written arguments, Eadie, who is asking Lord Justice Dingemans and Mr Justice Garnham to quash Hallett’s demand, also argued that forcing the government to hand over all of the files requested would breach GDPR provisions, which concern data protection.

He described the chair’s assertion that all documents covered by the notice were “potentially relevant” as “an untenable, irrational conclusion”.

Eadie said: “The Cabinet Office has never disputed that WhatsApp messages containing, or relating to, key pandemic decision-making are relevant and disclosable. Those are precisely the type of messages disclosed and not redacted.

“It is messages which do not concern pandemic decisions which are irrelevant, and yet caught by the over-broad notice. Compelling the provision of every WhatsApp over a two-year period, without any subject matter qualification, is absurd.”

Hugo Keith KC, representing Hallett, said in written submissions that the Cabinet Office’s interpretation of her powers was “flawed and unworkable” and “undermines the chair’s ability to fulfil her statutory terms of reference, both fully to investigate the facts and also to make effective recommendations for the future.”

He said: “It effectively leaves the holder of the documents, and not the chair, patrolling the boundary of what is relevant to the chair’s investigation. It would have serious implications not only for the ongoing work of this inquiry but for the conduct and operation of all current and future statutory inquiries.”

Johnson, an interested party in the case, reiterated his willingness to comply with Hallett. The former prime minister’s lawyer, Lord Pannick KC, said in his written arguments: “Mr Johnson has no objection to the inquiry inspecting the materials unredacted, subject to appropriate security and confidentiality arrangements having been put in place, given the personal and sensitive nature of some of the material.”

The judges will give their ruling at a later date but said they would attempt to reach a decision “as quickly as possible”.
 
Oh yes, because that would follow, wouldn’t it.

We keep being told by Brexiteers that we haven’t properly Brexited and just need a bit more Brexit to make Brexit a roaring success so logically we’ll be going for autarky and just lobbing rocks at France with a giant catapult sooner or later.
 
We keep being told by Brexiteers that we haven’t properly Brexited and just need a bit more Brexit to make Brexit a roaring success so logically we’ll be going for autarky and just lobbing rocks at France with a giant catapult sooner or later.

Works for me, although they seem quite happy chucking rocks at each other for the time being.
 
  • Like
Reactions: kiwiqpr
Just read that Suella Braverman has said if she can't get the Rwanda deal through the British courts she will take it to European Courts of Justice.

Surely some mistake!