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The tyranny of the lawyers, with Steven Barrett
2.8k Plays10 days ago
The UK is in stasis, and much of that can be attributed to the tyranny of the lawyers. Every attempt at reform is stymied by a complicated web of laws, not to mention that nebulous demi-religon, 'international law'. Will is joined by political commentator and barrister Steven Barrett to discuss how the UK became a country beholden to pointless legislation, and how it can be wound back.
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Transcript
Introduction of Stephen Barrett and Legal Stasis
00:00:19
Speaker
G'day and welcome to Fire at Will. My guest today is a political commentator and barrister known for his plain speaking analysis of the legal issues shaping the news.
00:00:31
Speaker
As a once middling legal student and even worse graduate lawyer, this is analysis that I am in desperate need of. Stephen Barrett, welcome to Fire at Will. It's an absolute pleasure. Thank you very much for having me.
UK Laws and International Law Hindering Government Action
00:00:44
Speaker
I wanted to get you on the show because it feels to me like in the United Kingdom today, whenever the government is trying to fix a problem, and indeed, I've got a lot of concerns about the way they go about doing that, but whenever they try and fix a problem, there always seems to be a byline, which is, well, there is this law that is stopping them from doing something, or international law is is is preventing them from implementing this policy or that policy.
00:01:11
Speaker
How has this country tied itself in legal knots, which has led to stasis? So I think most people understand that if you just keep printing money, you cause inflation.
00:01:24
Speaker
So if you just keep creating more money, you you cause massive problems within your economy. If you just keep printing laws, the same thing happens. And basically, since the Second World War, we have just been constantly printing laws. Don't don't get me wrong, since about 1992, that massively increased. I'm pretty sure, and if I'm out by a year or so, I don't i don't mind.
00:01:48
Speaker
But we used to have statute law in physical books on shelves. I'm old, that's what that's what it looked like. And i'm pretty sure 1992 is the first year, by by the way, 1943, when we're fighting a war, is really, really slim. You know, this this just shows you what Parliament's doing.
00:02:04
Speaker
And it's a good measure of what Parliament's doing. But 1992, I'm pretty sure, was the first year to have two volumes, and now two volumes, two fat volumes, is is standard and has been pretty standard for a very long time. If we're really lucky in one year, we might just get one really fat
Challenges in Repealing and Simplifying Laws
00:02:19
Speaker
volume.
00:02:19
Speaker
But the days of 1943 are long, long gone. And these things just compound. you know They just absolutely, they lay on top of each other. we we're not We don't have the concept. I mean, I suppose intellectually, we have the concept of a statute book.
00:02:37
Speaker
But we don't really have a concept of of one statute book. And I think we should probably actually bring that back because I think it would make it plain to people just how many laws there all are. If we just stop putting them by year, just put all the existing statute, and this is just statute, this is not statutory instruments and this is not case law.
00:02:55
Speaker
This is just, and statute is is the type law for your listeners and viewers. That's the type of law that parliament makes directly that they are supposed to debate in the chamber. And this is binding upon us. it's it's It's a very tough, powerful form of
Law Proliferation: Incompetence or Conspiracy?
00:03:08
Speaker
law.
00:03:08
Speaker
And there's bucket loads of it. that That's easier said than done, though. I remember the great maverick Australian billionaire Kerry Packer suggested once that Why don't you, speaking to a Senate committee, the next time you introduce a law, you've got to repeal an old one first, but the repeal an old one first bit never really seems to happen. I've got a few theories in my mind rattling around, but what do you put down, just that ever-increasing proliferation of statutes, regulations, bylaws, what do you put that down to?
00:03:41
Speaker
Well, I'm ah so often called a conspiracy theorist that I've really come to the conclusion that I simply can't be one because I don't really believe i don't really believe in conspiracy. You being a conspiracy theory is a conspiracy theory.
00:03:54
Speaker
Well, exactly. i mean And actually, but there are people in politics who constantly accuse people of conspiracy theories whilst spouting a conspiracy
MPs' Unawareness of Law Redundancies
00:04:02
Speaker
theory. but So we just don't look to that. just Just trust in human incompetence and human venal self-interest.
00:04:10
Speaker
You know, i was contact, I don't mind telling you i was contacted. I'm just going have to look at the the diary, the dates, but about seven years ago, possibly nine years ago by some very enthusiastic new conservative MPs who wanted to make a mark.
00:04:24
Speaker
They wanted to make a name for themselves. They were just backbench MP. So they were going to try and win the private members ballot. And then they were going to bring in a new law. And they wanted their new law to be that it will be legal but legally permissive whenever the NHS messes up for the NHS to issue an apology without admitting liability for for in in cash.
00:04:47
Speaker
and all their enthusiasm and they were they were keen that this would get in the papers and that people would be excited about this and that this would frame them in good light. And I had to go to them go back to them like sort of disappointing these sweet, energetic puppies and just tell them that law already exists.
Need for Clearer Legal Language and Structure
00:05:05
Speaker
A lot of the time, people simply don't know that laws already ex exist. So we have an existing law for the removal of peerages, which is a topic I'm going to get onto probably somewhere else, but it it doesn't matter.
00:05:17
Speaker
But obviously, I look at everything the minute minute it comes up. From 1917, it has no practical utility now because the First World War is over. But nobody bothered deleting it, did they?
00:05:29
Speaker
And that's not a conspiracy. It's not like in 1920, everybody went, ha, ha, ha, we'll just leave this on the statute book. A lot of it is just laziness. So could that be used to, because they're saying that there would need to be a new act of parliament in order to get rid of Mandelson, who, by the way, we now know has resigned from the House of Lords.
00:05:48
Speaker
But could that have hypothetically been used to get rid of him? Not unless you pervert the words, the current war. Ah, which yeah which I think some people could make an argument for if you're looking at war in the broadest possible sense with respect to the the destruction being heaped upon the United Kingdom.
00:06:07
Speaker
the The weakness of law is that there is always an argument. okay so that there is Interpretation plays a massive part. That's why the greatest duty on lawyers and particularly the people who write loyal laws and the primary laws being statutes, act of parliament, the duty really should lie on them to make them as clear as humanly possible.
00:06:27
Speaker
Don't get me wrong, clever lawyers will always come up with arguments. And I mean, ah i ah I'm a great fan of, i'm and i'm I've left the Conservative Party, but I remain a massive fan of the shadow Attorney General, Lord Wolfson. And Lord Wolfson famously was in the Court of Appeal arguing a point of law.
00:06:46
Speaker
And the only case law on it was a previous case he'd done. And he had persuaded the judge to say that the the law should be interpreted this way. And the the cunning Court of Appeal judges just said, well, Mr. Wilson, as he then was, you know were you wrong to to direct the judge to that conclusion?
00:07:06
Speaker
And David david just quipped back very wittily with, my lord, no, but the judge may well have been wrong to listen to me.
00:07:17
Speaker
he's arguing the opposite thing for a different client and that so there is always argument but that's why the duty is there to make law as clear as possible that duty by the way has been thrown out the window or our law is ah as opaque as mud i mean it's just bad it's just bad i i tried to read the hillsborough proposed hillsborough law and i i just kept getting um migraines it's just it's 68 pages of of rubbish to To do an allegedly simple thing.
00:07:41
Speaker
i mean, when i when I feel really bad about legislation, I go back to like the 20s and the 30s and 40s when we could actually write law.
Comparing Historical and Modern Legal Complexity
00:07:48
Speaker
yeah And you get Acts of Parliament, which are just, oh, all this this one from 1917. They're just very simple. they They tell you what they are.
00:07:56
Speaker
They don't just waffle on and on and on. But we are in this position as a country because our law is very bad. And of the three types of law, statute law, statutory instruments, also written by parliament, but gets barely any attention at all. So it's even worse.
00:08:11
Speaker
And case law, which I'm afraid the judges have to take some responsibility for because they used to write really short judgments and now they don't feel any restraint at all. And I've had to read judgments that are like 600 pages long.
Critique of Keir Starmer's Legal Meritocracy
00:08:27
Speaker
but That's a joke. Well, of course, the United Kingdom is now led by a lawyer, a former human rights lawyer, no less. When you think about someone like Keir Starmer and you think about his background, human rights law, director of public prosecutions, yeah know, this is a man who is incredibly difficult to understand in some respects. Some people call him a Fabian socialist. Some call him a you know vacuous, nothingy, managerial tech cryptocrat.
00:08:54
Speaker
you know i don't yeah i say I don't think there's two can conflict. Because Fabian's a point on the basis of loyalty, not merit. So they actually end up being quite rubbish. Well, how how do you perceive him then? And then how does that legal background tie into the way that he is running the country now?
00:09:09
Speaker
I would say that the greatest thing about Keir Starmer is that years ago, if I had gone public and said, this man doesn't deserve to be a KC, this is he's getting all of his promotions and jobs on unearned merit.
00:09:23
Speaker
This is just because he supports the Labour Party, supports Fabian Labour in particular. i I actually like non-Fabian Labour people. I'm i'm not I'm not just anti-lefties, but if I said all of this, if I said he's getting unearned benefits, surely because of his cult loyalty, people would have said, oh, Stephen, that's sour grapes. That's because you, you know, and and it would have come out and it would been very difficult to avoid. Whereas Keir Starmer, God bless him, has made my life so easy that everybody can now see that he's completely incompetent. So when I say he's completely incompetent, nobody goes, oh, Stephen, that's sour grapes. They go, oh, yeah. Yeah, we we see this now. And so we do really do have to question this. The entire Tony Blair created the rules that made him a KC.
00:10:10
Speaker
The Labour Party in government independently appointed him the director of public prosecutions. He went to as a just as a young man, he went to the the biggest lefty set there is to be a pupil barrister. Pupilage is very hard to get. It's the graduate job to be a barrister.
00:10:29
Speaker
Very, very competitive. And he just walked straight into one. He's got really bad A-level results. Okay, now people watching that might think that I'm just being nasty and mean, but to succeed as a lawyer, you actually have to have pretty good qualifications. You just you just do.
00:10:44
Speaker
You know, and there are many paths to success in life, and it's not always just being a lawyer. And one of my best mates or a close friend is is a billionaire who who has no formal qualifications. So again, I'm not saying that formal qualifications matter, but in theory, to succeed as a lawyer, you need better A-levels than Keir Starmer has.
Judiciary's Ideological Bias and Recruitment
00:11:01
Speaker
He's just appointed by the cult, but because the cult doesn't appoint on merit, it's not that threatening. It's it's like ah conspiracy, not by lizard people, but by a bunch of wet rags. I mean, that's it's just not scary.
00:11:17
Speaker
Yeah, that's interesting. So tell me how that would work then, like paint a picture of how that sort of progression would work. So in order to become a KC now, you have to fill in a massive bureaucratic form.
00:11:30
Speaker
You have to pay something like six to eight grand. I can't remember what it is. Most people then spend quite a few thousand pounds having a consultant advise them on it. So it's a big capital outlay at the first instance.
00:11:42
Speaker
And one of the key things that you have to demonstrate is your commitment to diversity, equality, and inclusion, DEI, which I think we all now know is just code for communism.
00:11:54
Speaker
And you if you can't demonstrate that commitment, you won't be allowed to be a KC and you'll lose all that money you did in applying. So it forces people into into being political for a start.
00:12:06
Speaker
The only real metric for being a KC should be merit as as legal ability. And you should be able to see that across parties' lines. So one of the most talented lawyers who I personally utterly dislike, but I will still, i'm I really loathe the man, was called Lord Bingham of ah Cornhill. I will concede that Lord Bingham was a very talented lawyer because he was.
00:12:28
Speaker
And you should be able to see this across party lines. they They blurred everything up. Starmer's not bad because it he's a lefty. He's bad because that part of the left has decided to recruit on a non-merit basis.
00:12:40
Speaker
Yeah, there is common argument now that says that the judiciary is ideologically captured and you look at the way that International human rights laws, you know, the ECHR, domestic laws which enable those laws like the Human Rights Act are basically interpreted in such a way that it enables progressive judges to put their particular political stance on a deportation order or on any number of different domestic priorities.
00:13:14
Speaker
How true is that assertion that you now have a judiciary that is effectively, to use the parlance of our time, work?
Judicial Overreach and Legislative Power
00:13:21
Speaker
It's not merely true. It's absolutely inevitable. Firstly, judicial recruitment uses exactly the same metric I've described for KC recruitment.
00:13:30
Speaker
And if they want to get promotion, they have to have an eye to their ongoing commitment to DEI. They're given all sorts of training in this sort of nonsense. So they're indoctrinated in it all the time.
00:13:40
Speaker
But i if I were charitable to them as individuals, I would say that this is the problem with fundamental rights. So just as a basic idea, you can have in a democracy, you can have elected officials making laws. And I like that system.
00:13:58
Speaker
And if they make a bad law, I think you then vote them out or they get voted out by the people and then the incoming people change the law. And I trust that because I trust the people.
00:14:08
Speaker
But people, other human beings who don't trust the people, so non-democrats, reach for, they always grasp for this concept of fundamental rights. And we can take this entirely out of the modern age. I mean, that's what human rights is. And that's what the ECHR is.
00:14:22
Speaker
But in Australia, you had a justice, because I think they're just called just your highest court in the land is just, they're just justices. Yeah. You had Mr. Justice Boothby in, eight so I'm going to get the dates wrong because I'm rubbish at numbers and I'm middle-aged, but something like 1865.
00:14:36
Speaker
He starts causing massive problems for the imperial government in London because he has decided, there's a phrase in all of the colonial legislation, and it's across the entirety of the empire, that says that you cannot they cannot a legislature cannot make a law which um conflicts fundamentally with the laws of England.
00:14:55
Speaker
And it's like, that sounds like a really good concept. That's exactly the same as a human rights concept, this idea that there are fundamental rights, fundamental laws that a legislature can't deal with. And he starts striking down all sorts of Australian statutes, which he actually needed to govern Australia in those days and causing a massive problem. So the government in London had to react to this one judge.
00:15:16
Speaker
And eventually they had to take that power away, which they did by the colonial act. I'm pretty sure it's 1867, but one of the colonial acts that just just had to cut his wings. They had to leave, but do their equivalent of leaving the ECHR because Bruce B had gone mental.
00:15:30
Speaker
Okay. And that's what happens when you have a concept of fundamental rights, because we're just humans. So what you're doing is you're saying to the judges, you're superior to parliament. Right, they don't face election. They don't have constituents whining at them every day.
00:15:45
Speaker
They don't have to go on the telly to justify themselves or on the radio. and They don't face massive public criticism because a lot of us, particularly in all of our Commonwealth ah jurisdictions, we're pretty respectful of judges. We we are. So i I find it a bit silly when they get a bit prissy over a mild insult. And it's like, well, actually, you get quite a lot of deference, mate. So but back in your box.
00:16:07
Speaker
but But it just goes to the head. Power just goes to that human's head. It goes to all of our heads. It's not, I mean, I'm a great Tolkienist. Tolkien's message was, be you high or low, the ring will corrupt you.
00:16:20
Speaker
You know, power is going to corrupt you. If you're a low person, you're probably going to end up like Gollum. If you're a high person, you'll end up like Sauron. But it doesn't matter. You're just, it's just going to corrupt you.
00:16:31
Speaker
And that's what happened to Booth B.J. And that's what has happened to all the ECHR judges. I've got an instinct for it, this answer may be, but when you look to the United Kingdom, when did the judges effectively take supremacy over the elected officials of the land? What was the tipping point?
00:16:49
Speaker
It was Blair. It was Blair. Tell tower that tell us how that happened. Well, the Human Rights Act is um is a massive start, but also in fairness, in defense of Blair, ever since the Second World War, they had been gathering more powers towards themselves. So at the at the heart of the constitution of the United Kingdom is a huge tension between royal power and parliamentary power.
00:17:13
Speaker
it's That's what caused our last civil war. If we're not lucky, it will cause our second civil war. The judges are royal power. and parliament is parliament and they should be subordinate to parliament. parliament After the second world war, whilst we're repairing and restructuring, parliament's doing relatively sensible things.
00:17:33
Speaker
So parliament, because it had a form of royal power called the prerogative, could have been could have made the government immune to all sorts of legal actions. And they were immune to all sorts of legal actions. Parliament passes a bill, passes an act of parliament in 1946, 1947 to remove all that and to say, no, no, no, government should be accountable through the court. So at the same, parliament is giving up its powers.
00:17:55
Speaker
At the same time, the courts were doing something called what's now called the Wendsbury Reasonable Test, which is what Reasonable does Test, which is Judicial Review. And they were pushing their own, they were grabbing powers when Parliament was giving them away. Parliament and the government were giving them away and the courts were grabbing them.
00:18:09
Speaker
And that's been going on ever since the war. You get in the 60s, another bunch of land grabbed powers by the judges saying, oh, we can do this, we can do that. but it accelerates under Blair. It gives them an artificial sense of ah self-confidence to the point where in 2008, you get the judges saying, ah we get to decide whether, I won't bore your listeners and viewers, but it's a type of legislation which has existed for 800 years and for 800 years had never been questioned, challenged, or struck down by the judges.
00:18:44
Speaker
And you just get, the All of them agree, all five of them agreed, but to my mind, Lord Mance is the most irritating because he just says, I can see no obvious reason why we can't do this. It's just like, well, I'm sorry, deluded man. you you Man offered power cannot see reason why he shouldn't have it. Oh, I've definitely never seen. i mean, that there are, they, they,
00:19:07
Speaker
It's wrapped up in intellectualism, but everybody watching this will have experienced or of a certain age will have experienced this when a nightclub bouncer lets power go to their head. You know, thiss this is that and that's what our judges have been doing, but they were egged on by Blair, massively pushed by that man, Lord Bingham of Cornhill.
Impact of Human Rights Act on Legal Landscape
00:19:25
Speaker
There's a reason I dislike it. You know, he he's led them into this trap and the United Kingdom now is in is in a parlour state. So you mentioned the human rights act. How does that fit into this story?
00:19:37
Speaker
Well, again, that just empowers judges beyond belief. So not only do you start to have the ECHR as the superior court in the land, you then make all the judges loyal, not to us and our common law, but to what they say.
00:19:52
Speaker
So our judges now listen to them and do what they say. It takes a long time to corrupt them because they have to come out with judgments. And remember that there's a misleading fact that ah lefty lawyers always like to say, which is that Oh, only eight or 10 cases a year are brought against the United Kingdom. And it's like, yes, but all of the cases are binding against the United Kingdom, whether we're a party to them or not. So, you know, the whole thing is binding every year.
00:20:17
Speaker
And that builds up and that builds up and that builds But also, it also acts as, you know, it's like it has a chilling effect, I imagine, in that particular proposals, policies, initiatives aren't even tried because you go, well, we won't be able to do it because of the ECHR or Yeah, and the the particular chilling effect is that once you remove clear rules, you create uncertainty.
00:20:40
Speaker
And so people just ah people don't want to be thought of as stupid. There's a very human desire to to not be thought of as stupid. So you're like, well, if every judgment of this court, I don't really understand them. They're very really very long and very wordy. They don't seem to make sense.
00:20:55
Speaker
But broadly speaking, they're all center left. then when you're advising a client, you think you say, well, broadly speaking, the outcome will probably be center left. You don't say it and articulate it that way, but that is what they are doing.
00:21:08
Speaker
And i will it's it's part of the collapse in law. It's part of the perfectly natural feeling of uncertainty once rules are uncertain. And to to make this clear to non-lawyers, I always just say, what's the worst thing to find on a party invitation?
00:21:25
Speaker
Particularly if you're English, I don't know if this will translate to Australia, but ah for us- B-Y-R, I would have thought. the the worst No, the worst the worst words are smart dress, smart casual.
00:21:37
Speaker
What the hell is that? Tell an Englishman to dress in white tie, he'll dress in white tie. Tell him to dress in black he'll dress in black tie. Tell him to dress in a lounge suit, he'll dress in a lounge suit. Tell him no dress, he'll come as he is.
00:21:48
Speaker
What the hell is smart casual? It doesn't mean it. And it traumatized us for years with these, you have all these party invitations with smart casual. And it's just it's just, that is demon a demonstration of the danger of the unclarity of rules. But just back to the Human Rights Act, I want to really, really, really highlight the absolute perversity of the power it gave judges because there's a clause in the Human Rights Act and it's either, forgive me, it's either section three or section four, it's definitely one of them, that allows the court to interpret what parliament has written. Parliament has typed this law, it has debated this law, it has argued over this law and parliament has decided it will be law and parliament is supreme.
00:22:31
Speaker
it gives the judges the ability to read that what was typed as though it said something different. And the apex of this was when Priti Patel was home secretary and she passed a law trying to curb illegal immigration into the United Kingdom, which is still a massive ongoing problem.
00:22:49
Speaker
And, but to Priti's defense, the courts read the words in exactly the opposite of their meaning. The exact opposite of their meaning. not not Not merely just, oh, well, it's a bit ambiguous, I'm going to reinterpret it.
00:23:05
Speaker
They absolutely flipped the meaning. It meant one thing, which is, of course, no migrants. And they flipped it to, actually, we can have migrants because some think something, something human rights. Yeah. Okay. Well, let's make this let's make this very practical then. Let's take a couple of examples of where this sort of judicial activism is really hurting this country. And I think you've picked up on the most obvious one, which is around illegal migration.
00:23:31
Speaker
Talk to me how the ECHR and the Human Rights Act, A, makes it harder to stop people coming into this country illegally, and B, how does it make it harder to get rid of the scumbags when they, for example, have been found to, you know, when they when they've been when a deportation order has been made.
00:23:52
Speaker
Well, because the ECHR has gone gone mad with power. So I remember the first, Boris's government ah tried something called the Rwanda scheme. And I hope people remember that there was Rwanda 1, which the court struck down.
00:24:07
Speaker
Then there was Rwanda 2, which Robert Jenrick resigned over. And I went in the spectator and said, it's not going to work, but the government collapsed. and then labor stopped it. So it never actually got a chance to get struck down. But those are two- I'll interject quickly for Australian viewers and listeners. This is broadly comparable to the Nauru yes and think a solution in Australia.
00:24:32
Speaker
Yes, I'm very sensible. Offshore detention and processing. Yes, which by the way, works for you guys. But that was the idea behind it
ECHR's Influence on Immigration Policies
00:24:40
Speaker
it. So complicated is our law and so overarching is the ECHR that I was going to appear on a popular British news channel at 6 a.m. the next morning to explain what the Rwanda plan was.
00:24:53
Speaker
And I went to bed as you would, or as I do, about, you know, half past eight, because I need a lot of sleep. But, and by the time I woke up, The ECHR had overnight blocked the Rwanda plan. It had blocked the Rwanda 1 and it had done it using a power that none of us gave it when we joined the ECHR.
00:25:14
Speaker
It gave itself this power and said, we have the power to issue. There's a technical term, they're called injunctions, but that court wasn't created with the power to make injunctions. That court just said, oh, we we think we probably have the power.
00:25:28
Speaker
Right, again, this this idea that humans just get corrupted by power. So they used this injunctive power to to stop Rwanda 1. And it was immediately clear that any argument that the government was going to take on Rwanda 1 was going to fail in the courts as as a result, and the EZHR would eventually block it.
00:25:44
Speaker
And so eventually the government, the conservative, so-called conservative government, tries to implement Rwanda 2. That's when we lose this then quite senior minister, Robert Jenrick.
00:25:55
Speaker
who is trying very hard, sorry, I'm being called by a producer, but he was trying very hard to actually stop illegal immigration. That's when he looked at the and the second Rwanda scheme and went, this is not gonna work.
00:26:07
Speaker
Now, he didn't do that because he's got magic powers. He did it because he's a lawyer. And I looked at it and I went, this is not gonna work. And it was never gonna work. There was absolutely no way that that rwanda was going to the was going to work.
00:26:21
Speaker
But of course the Rishi government vaguely claimed it would. We always got to a point where I was mildly suspicious that government, not the ministers, not the elected officials, But the unelected civil servants were deliberately writing things that were doomed to fail.
00:26:36
Speaker
And they sort of thought, well, this will just buy off the public for a little while. it just It will distract them. A bit like Keir Starmer's smash the gangs. Keir Starmer's our prime minister. He got into power on an express manifesto promised to smash the illegal gangs.
00:26:50
Speaker
He has done nothing. They have record gang boat migrants coming to this to to this country. It really is to my mind, the the apex of of of a coup where all power in your country has has been taken away out of your democratic legislat legislature, away from your elected government.
00:27:11
Speaker
And now is in the hands of people you don't even know, which is why on my sub stack, I went through all of the 47 judges in the ECHR. I didn't actually report on all of them because many of them are exactly the same. They're like cookie cutter people.
00:27:24
Speaker
but i reported on about 40 of them just to explain that they're non-entities who shouldn't wield power in our country yeah the other thing is my understanding is that the echr can be used by u k judges in order to for example stop a deportation for happening okay i was on gb news about a month ago and i did a countdown of the top 10 stupidest reasons that particular deportation orders had been blocked by judges and you know one of them is the famous bloke whose kid didn't like Albanian chicken nuggets and that was going to breach his human rights in some way.
00:27:59
Speaker
If there is such a thing as Albanian chicken nuggets, because they're in the they're in the EU, which means there's supposed to be product harmony. So all EU chicken nuggets should be the same in theory.
00:28:10
Speaker
Yeah, ah food for thought, excuse the pun. but But the point is ridiculous reasons being given, you know, for staying in the country. And yet the judges point to the ECHR. Generally, it's it's a particular part of the ECHR that says it's ah a right to a family life or right to to a home life, something like that.
00:28:29
Speaker
and Yeah, that's right. but late bad luck Is the problem the woke judges in that instance or is the problem the the legislation or I guess it's just both of them acting in harmony with each other? Is the problem a bunch of colonial legislation saying that no legislature shall pass law repugnant to the laws of England?
00:28:47
Speaker
Or is the problem Booth B.J.? it's It's always the individuals who massively over-interpret this. If you read Article 8, it's desperately sweet. There's nothing offensive in Article 8. It's just, you know, everybody has the right to a lovely home. And like effectively, what it is, is to start... all And all of these articles, just so your viewers know,
00:29:09
Speaker
it You know, let's be basic about this. We just had a bunch of tyrannical dictators in continental Europe. It's very easy to look at Hitler, okay?
00:29:20
Speaker
It wasn't just Hitler. You've still got Stalin in Russia. We had Mussolini down in Italy. We had Franco in Spain. I forget the Portuguese guy's name, but he was there. He was another dictator.
00:29:33
Speaker
And we effectively had a French dictatorship. I mean, even under de Gaulle, it's not it's hard to argue. it It's a functioning what I would consider democracy. And so they came up with these basic rules to like to like stop them being completely evil.
00:29:48
Speaker
It's like you give it to a dictator and and and in I think it's quite cynical after the war. I think there's a sort of cynical belief that maybe dictators will come back, but let's have some basic ground rules for dictator future dictators.
00:30:01
Speaker
You know, you can be a dictator, but leave people alone. Don't, you know, have your secret police kick their door down and arrest them whilst they're watching The Simpsons. You know, that's that's all Article 8 really is.
00:30:13
Speaker
That's all it is. But it's been massively over interpreted because just as as as Australia's Mr. Justice Booth be proved, once you give humans power, unaccountable power, they will behave in odd ways.
Legal Reforms for Sovereignty and Immigration Issues
00:30:25
Speaker
And those perverse judgments are always, I think, because they're looking to an eye with promotion because they want to they want to say, oh look, I've demonstrated my commitment to equality and diversity.
00:30:35
Speaker
So is there any way that the government can solve the illegal boats problem without repealing the without leaving the ECHO? No. No. And not only that, it's an absolute first step on a really long road, which is why I personally left and the Conservative Party, because to have such hoopla, to have her such a palaver, I've already name-checked.
00:30:59
Speaker
Lord Wolfson of Tradega, who I deeply respect in intellectually, but to have Lord Wolfson commissioned to to answer a a yes or no question with a really lengthy thorough, it's a brilliant investigation of the ECHR, but it should not be necessary.
00:31:15
Speaker
It should be obvious that the answer to to that is yes. And then the next question is, and what else do we have to do? Because there's a whole bunch of other stuff that we have to do. And I will defend some, when judges, are again,
00:31:27
Speaker
When judges are good judges, I try and defend them to the absolute hilt. And we currently have a brilliant head of our Supreme Court who's called a Lord Reid. And when he struck down Rwanda One, he he did that, although they got the injunction, he he ultimately struck it down in ah in a later hearing, getting rid of it forever.
00:31:48
Speaker
His, he said he didn't want to block it as a policy. And I believe him. I trust him. He's a good man. When he struck it down and he said he didn't want to do it, I believed him. And if you take his judgment and reverse it, it actually tells you how to make a Rwanda plan work.
00:32:03
Speaker
That's the real, that's the real genius of his judgment. Cause, and one of them is you'd have to leave the ECHR, but then you'd have to do this and this and this and this and this and this and this and this this and this.
Tension Between National Sovereignty and International Law
00:32:12
Speaker
But if you do them all, and our parliament can, because our parliament's like your parliament, it's it's absolute, it's supreme. that That's what we what's what we've done. We created the fires of Mount Doom.
00:32:22
Speaker
And the Americans have a terrible, messy constitution that's really difficult to do. I think it's absolutely amazing that Donald Trump's achieving as much as he's achieving. But if we just, instead of, because Lord Reid got some criticism for that, which I thought was deeply unfair by the people who wanted the Rwanda plan to work.
00:32:39
Speaker
If you want a Rwanda plan to work, you just do what Laudrey told you to. And one of the reasons that Robert Jenrick had so much confidence to resign is that he knew the second Rwanda plan wasn't doing any of that.
00:32:51
Speaker
So there's a related conversation around not just the primacy of unelected activist judges, but the primacy of this vague nebulous notion of international law, which the ECHR is a component piece.
00:33:06
Speaker
We must always reject the supremacy of international law because if international law is supreme, there is no democracy. And so that's, I think that's very important for all of us to to to accept and to learn.
00:33:18
Speaker
Yeah, ah so let's put this, make this tangible. This has come into focus with the Chagos deal, the Chagos surrender, where basically the UK is paying ludicrous amounts of money to Mauritius based off a non-binding international court of justice judgment, which was made in part by a Chinese judge who used to be a CCP official.
00:33:41
Speaker
that says that Mauritius had a claim to the land, the Chagos Islands. And that was enough for Keir Starmer and his pal, the Attorney General, Lord Herma, to swing into action with a passion that I have actually not seen from them in any other sphere of governance and basically just give away this land as quickly as possible.
00:34:04
Speaker
And they've said, and the only real justification they've been able to provide is, well, international law says we should do it. to tell Talk me through why that argument is wrong. Okay, so that argument is wrong for one incredibly simple reason.
00:34:19
Speaker
The membership membership of that court who did that with the Chinese CCP judge is voluntary. this membership of international organizations and courts is voluntary.
00:34:31
Speaker
We, the United Kingdom, joined it voluntarily. And when we did, we said, and and all international law really is a contract. So we negotiated a clause in the contract, in the treaty, that said, we'll join you, but you will never have control over any dispute involving our empire or dominion former dominion territories.
00:34:53
Speaker
So for that very simple reason, the court has no justour jurisdiction over Chagos or any former territory. It has no jurisdiction in it in a dispute between the United Kingdom and and Australia, although God forbid we ever get into one, but it has no jurisdiction.
00:35:07
Speaker
So that it you know courts only have the jurisdictions that they the jurisdiction that they are given. And to explain that, to I hope in an accessible way, we in the United Kingdom, have our parliament has abolished the death penalty.
00:35:20
Speaker
So we have said to our our criminal courts, you do not have the jurisdiction to order the death penalty. So if a judge in ah one of our criminal courts ordered the death penalty tomorrow, we'd be able to go, no, judge, you don't have jurisdiction for that. You know, there are limits on on judges' jurisdiction. There are limits on the court powers. And we have an absolute bar on that.
00:35:40
Speaker
The other, so, but the ICH is clever. It knows that. So it it didn't ever order us to give the Chagos Islands away. The whole thing was a massive bluff designed to make it look like if we don't give them away, they might do that. like, well, they can't do that.
00:35:56
Speaker
Okay, so I'm i'm just, but I get very bored of this argument. It's just it's just wrong. Let's assume that that, for example, there wasn't that exception and that the ICJ did have the jurisdiction to be able to present a judgment that was binding.
00:36:12
Speaker
What is stopping the United Kingdom from just saying, stick it up your backside, we don't agree with this decision, bad luck. Like it seems to me the big problem with international law is that there isn't really any enforcement mechanism that can stop countries from just saying, well, bad luck.
00:36:27
Speaker
And as a result, it seems like the UK are suckers in that they are basically abiding by this stuff when so many other countries have a more pragmatic approach of saying, you know what, if this isn't in our national interest, stick it up your backside.
Critique of International Courts and Legal Professionals
00:36:40
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, that I'd call that point three. So point one is they had no jurisdiction to do this at all. Point two is if they started seriously making noise about it, we should just leave and just go, we're not a member of your court anymore. So nothing you says matters.
00:36:53
Speaker
You know, and of course the you u the US s us s isn't isn't under the jurisdiction. I never know under Trump, but they' they're definitely that there's another UN n court called the International Criminal Court. And neither Israel nor the United States are under are under that because they both go, no, we don't trust you. You're a bunch of of nutters, which by the way, they're they're proving them right.
00:37:12
Speaker
ah so two the The arrest warrant against Netanyahu is not lawful on any of the icj ICC's own legal terms. So these these courts of international law, they irritate me because they get so much prestige and they're given so much importance. And and I look at them and go you're all really bad lawyers. You're you're worse lawyers than Lord Bingham.
00:37:32
Speaker
I mean, it's just really bad. You make Starmer look clever because there is such a thing, regardless of political affiliation, on being a good lawyer or a bad lawyer. And you've got Justice Edelman in your, I i hope you've still got Justice Edelman in your high court.
00:37:47
Speaker
He's a phenomenally clever lawyer. Now, it doesn't mean I'll agree with him on everything and I don't know his politics. But, you know, he's a phenomenally clever lawyer. In Australia, the lawyer who I always loved the most was Justice Gumo.
00:37:59
Speaker
And I just, I think he's an absolute genius. I mean, if we could have grabbed him and taken him back to the to the motherland, we should have done. But you've got to look at these things and go, what authority do they have?
00:38:11
Speaker
And this has none. Yeah, and which makes it incredibly depressing that you have Starmer and Herma, which continually point to international law as the justification for so many things which appear to be not in the interests of the United Kingdom.
00:38:24
Speaker
The other thing that has come out, and this is an interesting question as to whether, is that there are so many causes and defendants that Starmer and Lord Herma have either defended or been affiliated with in some way, who were so obviously enemies of the state of the United Kingdom, from Gerry Adams to Al-Qaeda leaders to most recently evidence coming out that Starmer was party to a particular case that was looking to in what looks like a pretty vexatious way, ah look into supposed war crimes on behalf of British soldiers in Afghanistan, which which had already been twice ah found to be a non-issue.
00:39:06
Speaker
Do you think that those affiliations, that instinct, it seems, to defend people who were so obviously enemies in el Kingdom, do you think that should be held against those two men now that they are meant to be representatives of the United Kingdom and acting in its best interests?
00:39:24
Speaker
Yes, without question. And what happened in my profession and amongst fellow lawyers is it simply became fashionable to attack your own country. It became the height of cool. It became the path to wealth and riches and fame.
00:39:39
Speaker
I should clarify for your viewers that both Lord Herma KC is far more eminent than me because he's both a KC, which I'm not, and he's a Lord, which I'm not. Sir Keir Starmer is far more eminent than me because he's both a KC, which I'm not, and he has a knighthood, which I don't have.
00:39:56
Speaker
But I can do law and they can't. We really have to question how we got to this position where getting all the wealth and the fame and the titles it is connected not with doing law well, but connected with attacking your country and taking these highly weird political positions.
Free Speech and Legal Pressures in the UK
00:40:14
Speaker
but it's It's been very charming to be in the UK whenever the Americans have spoken up because, and I really think they've rescued us because we almost don't realize how mentally conditioned we are.
00:40:26
Speaker
Like we're like, oh, I can't complain about our young girls being raped. We'll be told off if we do that. and it And then Elon comes in with, this is disgusting. And we're like, yes, it is. We knew that all along, but we weren't allowed. We've been absolutely suppressed. it's been It's been monstrous. I don't know what it's been like in Australia, but we've been literally silenced.
00:40:45
Speaker
Well, that's actually a a good segue. We've been silenced because perhaps the legal concern that that is closest to my heart is the chilling suppression of free speech in the United Kingdom.
00:41:00
Speaker
And this is across a whole range of different laws and in some instances, even even not regulations or that that police non-crimes, like non-crime hate incidents.
00:41:15
Speaker
Give me ah an overview of the state of free speech in the United Kingdom and how the current legal framework effectively stifles it. So just so your viewers know, one of the most political one of the most popular political cartoons right now in the United Kingdom goes like this. It's two friends having ah a cup of tea in a cafe.
00:41:38
Speaker
And one friend says, how are things? And then the next frame, the other friend says, can't complain, which is a standard British expression. And then in the next frame, the person who said can't complain has their head on the table and is crying.
00:41:53
Speaker
And then the next frame, they sit up and say, because they'll arrest me. and that's that And we're all fearless. I'm pretty vocal on ah in the media and in social media because I'm a lawyer and I know exactly how far I can go. And and they're slightly scared to do anything obvious to to me because you know i I'll just make it worse. There's such a thing called the Streisand effect.
00:42:17
Speaker
But a lot, most people do not feel able to speak out. Most people do not feel able to share their most basic political opinions if it in any way conflicts with this idea that the purpose of of Britain is to house endless migrant men and never complain about it.
00:42:37
Speaker
And the purpose of Britain is to hurt and hate Britain, i.e. give away the Shagos Islands. it's It's been the most ridiculous thing to live through where, I mean, i I don't think we're blameless. I think our Britishness in particular didn't help because we don't like to be criticized. We don't like to cause a fuss. We don't like loud noises.
00:42:58
Speaker
You know, we are a bit timid. that There's one of the reasons why why you you are seeing rebellion in Britain in places like Essex and Kent, which are traditionally much more rebellious. which by the way, we we we deported a lot of those people over to Australia because they were being rebellious.
00:43:15
Speaker
But yeah, life in the United Kingdom is absolutely awful. I i have to face the reality. I could get arrested over something i' allegedly said anytime. that There's another lens to this, which is some people would argue, and I certainly would, that the free speech has been sacrificed at the altar of multiculturalism, that politicians see multiculturalism and free speech as fundamentally incompatible, and they've chosen multiculturalism.
00:43:43
Speaker
And... You even heard an astonishing clip from the Premier of New South Wales, I believe it was last year now, where he openly said, we don't have a First Amendment in the same way that the US does because we are a multicultural society and we need to keep the peace basically.
00:43:59
Speaker
And it feels like the United Kingdom and leaders both from You know, the conservative side and the labor side have all made this joint and understanding. I have this come to this joint understanding that you cannot let people say what they want to say because you now have a society which is full of different cultures.
00:44:18
Speaker
You know, some are more prone to blowing people up after particular nasty words are said. And as a result of that, we need criminalize speech. How reasonable is that as an assertion?
00:44:29
Speaker
I think that's completely true. And I think it's coercive and controlling behavior. I think it's what happens in a domestic violence setting where the bad, and i'm i'm I'm openly bisexual.
00:44:42
Speaker
So I accept that there are good men to have a relationship and bad men to have a relationship with and good women to have a relationship with and bad women to have a relationship with. pete Humans are bad who are bad to have a relationship with, in my experience,
00:44:55
Speaker
generally make you feel like you're walking on eggshells will immediately explode if they don't get their own way. And somehow the fault will be you. And that's what it that is exactly what it feels like to be a UK citizen right now.
00:45:09
Speaker
they we're all walking on eggshells at any time we might say something because there are no clear rules at any time we might say something that is deemed offensive at which point we won't be met with a mild rebuke it will be like a explosion of rage i mean we didn't just mildly rebuke a mum and a child minder for sending an inappropriate tweet we sent her to prison for 31 months We denied her bails. We denied her, effectively, we denied her act active access to good lawyers.
00:45:39
Speaker
and then And then we said, oh, didn't we do well about it? I mean, it's just this sort of stuff. One of our leading journalists is called Alison Pearson. And and we we didn't just,
00:45:50
Speaker
he just mildly criticize her or send her a letter asking her to explain something she'd said on social media. They sent officers round to her house on Remembrance Sunday, traumatizing her to the point where she couldn't even go to Remembrance Sunday.
00:46:03
Speaker
i mean, we we have become an absolute nightmare to live with. We are basically the victims because we have this domestic violence offense called coercive and controlling behavior.
00:46:14
Speaker
which I think the world just knows is narcissistic rage, which is the idea that, you know, the minute somebody doesn't get their own way, it's all your fault. It's never their fault. They never accept any responsibility for anything. And it's always colossally huge, even though actually it was probably quite a small thing that probably a grownup could have just lived with.
00:46:32
Speaker
And that's that's basically how our government now act and our police act. on this basis they openly say things like we are cancelling this protest or this planned march because otherwise there might be violence from the marches no right so what you're siding with the victor you're soing you're you're blaming the victims but this is also as a result of what feels like this quite this twist on the on the way that you traditionally thought about criminality from being about objective, testable things that occur to another person. You can tell if someone punches someone else in the face and they get a black eye, that is objective.
00:47:12
Speaker
That is, you can compare that to previous cases that have happened in the past. It's measurable. to something which is subjective. And now the feelings of the other person and the psychological harm of the other person now seems to be the litmus test by which harm is measured. And therefore, that's the the kind of critical mechanism by which you take speech from being to to being a, you know, to being criminal effectively.
00:47:36
Speaker
Yes, and if you're charitable, you call this the logic of postmodernism. But if you're uncharitable, you recognize that postmodernists are are evil, and all they're trying to do is use words to justify being evil.
00:47:50
Speaker
A good and healthy society has clear laws known in advance which are applied equally to all members. and that That's what happens. And and I'm a Christian. it's It's getting very difficult to be openly Christian in in the UK.
00:48:05
Speaker
But you know I also therefore believe in forgiveness. If somebody you know repents and says that they've done something terribly wrong. i mean, look, I'm not the first person to forgive people who hurt children. And um um I'll confess that that might be a failing in me.
00:48:19
Speaker
I don't think it is, but I couldn't have that one out one day.
Call for Legal Clarity and Reform
00:48:22
Speaker
But you know we we should be that healthy society. Instead, the United Kingdom is an incredibly brittle society that is walking on eggshells, where offense is the only thing anybody responds to. And it's post-event.
00:48:36
Speaker
It's after the event. So our major media regulator is called Ofcom. And Ofcom only cares about something based upon how many complaints it gets. That's literally mob rule. but That's all that is. If if if if I've come where a functioning part of a genuine legal system with the rule of law, and he got one complaint that was true, it would prosecute you it and carry it too. And if he got 100,000 complaints, all of which were false,
00:49:03
Speaker
it would ignore them because it would apply the rules effectively and instead of com only acts based upon the numbers and we we are where we are i i really i despair for the for the country i i don't think we've ever been in as black a place as as we are now it's it's it's bordering on hopeless Well, that's that's a yeah it's it's a gloomy picture. And I think a lot of people feel the same way.
00:49:28
Speaker
Stephen, as a final question, perhaps to to provide some optimism, if you were to be the Attorney General in a new, let's say, let's follow the polls, a new reform government,
00:49:40
Speaker
unfortunately, most likely in 2029. What are the things that you would do, A, to break that stasis that we talked about before, and then perhaps on some of the more specific areas that we talked about on on immigration, free speech, all those sorts of things at the moment, which seem to be you know leading to so many problems in this country?
00:50:00
Speaker
We must restore clarity of law. Rules must be clear. It should be obvious, I think, to most people that there will never be enough police officers to police the criminal law.
00:50:15
Speaker
So to my mind, the people are the police and the police are the people. If you go out, when I remember my country in a healthy way, If a bloke does something in a pub that's inappropriate to a woman, you don't need to call the officers.
00:50:30
Speaker
You don't need a bunch of them coming around because all the other men will make sure that that is dealt with and it will be dealt with, you know, because they know what the rules are. So the fundamental quest, I think, for the United Kingdom in the coming years is to restore clarity of law.
00:50:47
Speaker
And I don't need any any titles or or any and i help from anybody else. we just We just must restore clarity. We must know, we must own it. though The heights of my country,
00:51:01
Speaker
We published statute law in the Times in particular. So when I was a little baby barrister, so it was somebody's job. it was a junior clerk's job to cut out the Times and paste it into books. And we'd we'd have those books going back years and years and years and years and years. And people would, they were stored in the first room I was ever in, in chambers. So other members of chambers would come in and say, oh, ter sorry, don't mind me. I'm just consulting the Times reports.
00:51:26
Speaker
And then they'd come and they'd look at this stuff and they and they we would report cases. I was reading a ah part of parliament from the sixties. That's not that far ago. and it was very clear that all of the MPs had read the relevant House of Lords judgment. I cannot tell you the last time in the United Kingdom.
00:51:44
Speaker
an MP had actually read any court judgment, you know? It's just, so we need to get back to, and and shout out to one of my favorite parliamentarians, who's the Baroness Claire Fox, who is ah who's a lefty. Again, I'm not tribal in any way.
00:51:58
Speaker
And I think she's marvelous because she reads everything. How many of our MPs even read the bills that they pass? we We've got this, I'm sure you'll have it because it's across the West, this ridiculous idea that the state should be mass killing its own citizens, which will just become a eugenics and just become the death of the of this the elderly, the sick, the poor.
00:52:17
Speaker
And and it's it's monstrous evil. Humans are not complicated. well Look, well done. We've reinvented evil again. But in our first chamber in the House of Commons, that bill passed. And I genuinely don't know how many of them read any of it, any of it. I have almost no confidence, but then it goes to the House of Lords.
00:52:37
Speaker
And I know at least Claire and that's, I don't mean to be rude to the other members of the House of Lords. There are many good members, but at least Claire will read everything that goes to that house. And we need to get back to the idea that legislators read stuff, that they argue about stuff, and that fewer words and greater clarity are the key to a happy country.
00:52:58
Speaker
Clear law. So where can people read your stuff and potentially argue about your stuff? That's very kind. I have a Substack. I used to publish in The Spectator, so I have a back catalog there, but mostly I'm on Substack, I'm on YouTube, and I am unable to rid myself of the addiction that is Twitter, but I will recognize it's an addiction.
00:53:21
Speaker
Links to all of those are in the show notes. Stephen, fascinating conversation. Thank you so much for coming on. Thank you. Thank you very much for having me.