‘That, he says, hardly accords with the notion that human rights can be enforced for the benefit of unpopular minorities. “The justice secretary’s framing of matters is potentially troubling,” Elliott wrote last night, “given the implicit premise about the resilience or otherwise of human rights in the face of shifting public opinion”.’
Just this. If human rights are not applied equally across the board then they are not rights at all. It is only when they are applied equally to unpopular minorities and people (eg Shamima Begum, whose unjust treatment I have mentioned here before) that they can truly be called rights.
What a seductive, apparently unchallengeable basis for attacking both domestic, ICJ and Strasbourg ruling. And yet one person’s “take” on “common sense” is another’s odious NONsense. Presumably, the self congratulatory “Common sense” group (CSG) of Parliamentarians would cherry pick from the Justice Secretary’s speech those sentences or even words (naturally taken out of context) and see and/or announce that -finally- Mahmood is coming to her senses and why not hurry up about it?
I suspect Shabana Mahmood had hoped to head the off the likes of Reform and a nakedly ambitious Jenrick off at the pass.
I scarcely see that as working- quite the reverse!
I fear it will be interpreted by the CSG and -of course- Reform as an encouragement, for example, to attack once again the likes of a Professor Corinne Fowler, historian reviled by TOO many for telling it as it was and is about Colonial, slave dependent Britain. Death threats; lewder menacing- you name it. NOT just extremist Little Englanders, incels and so forth but also by (generally male) supposedly serious academics.
And so, if you will, I declare an interest.
I liken SOME of the Justice Secretary’s phrases -as I accept WITH HER wrenched out of her intended context- to Sir K’s “island of strangers” and other (I fear ) much more intentional utterances.
“Heading off at the pass”? In both instances I think NOT. Language matters; language is difficult and sometimes downright impossible to take back. Before you know it as a serious senior political figure it may prove indigestible to eat your words. In practical terms are you then left having to implement a more isolationist and -yes- xenophobic policy. That is the most charitable view I might now with reluctance form of quite a number of the positions Blair chose to adopt. To be honest I still believe that he had found himself drawn to illiberal “strategies” with which he was more comfortable from the outset.
I hope what I have said will be seen as no unnecessary digression, since (please) let us NOT repeat those mistakes. We probably all know what George Santayana said about that (“Those who fail to learn from the mistakes of history are destined to repeat them.”)
‘That, he says, hardly accords with the notion that human rights can be enforced for the benefit of unpopular minorities. “The justice secretary’s framing of matters is potentially troubling,” Elliott wrote last night, “given the implicit premise about the resilience or otherwise of human rights in the face of shifting public opinion”.’
Just this. If human rights are not applied equally across the board then they are not rights at all. It is only when they are applied equally to unpopular minorities and people (eg Shamima Begum, whose unjust treatment I have mentioned here before) that they can truly be called rights.
Respectfully, I am with Professor Elliott.
“Common sense”?
What a seductive, apparently unchallengeable basis for attacking both domestic, ICJ and Strasbourg ruling. And yet one person’s “take” on “common sense” is another’s odious NONsense. Presumably, the self congratulatory “Common sense” group (CSG) of Parliamentarians would cherry pick from the Justice Secretary’s speech those sentences or even words (naturally taken out of context) and see and/or announce that -finally- Mahmood is coming to her senses and why not hurry up about it?
I suspect Shabana Mahmood had hoped to head the off the likes of Reform and a nakedly ambitious Jenrick off at the pass.
I scarcely see that as working- quite the reverse!
I fear it will be interpreted by the CSG and -of course- Reform as an encouragement, for example, to attack once again the likes of a Professor Corinne Fowler, historian reviled by TOO many for telling it as it was and is about Colonial, slave dependent Britain. Death threats; lewder menacing- you name it. NOT just extremist Little Englanders, incels and so forth but also by (generally male) supposedly serious academics.
And so, if you will, I declare an interest.
I liken SOME of the Justice Secretary’s phrases -as I accept WITH HER wrenched out of her intended context- to Sir K’s “island of strangers” and other (I fear ) much more intentional utterances.
“Heading off at the pass”? In both instances I think NOT. Language matters; language is difficult and sometimes downright impossible to take back. Before you know it as a serious senior political figure it may prove indigestible to eat your words. In practical terms are you then left having to implement a more isolationist and -yes- xenophobic policy. That is the most charitable view I might now with reluctance form of quite a number of the positions Blair chose to adopt. To be honest I still believe that he had found himself drawn to illiberal “strategies” with which he was more comfortable from the outset.
I hope what I have said will be seen as no unnecessary digression, since (please) let us NOT repeat those mistakes. We probably all know what George Santayana said about that (“Those who fail to learn from the mistakes of history are destined to repeat them.”)