My sense is the headline yesterday is for party and voter management whilst Rishi is really working on solving this by dealing with Macron bilaterally and accelerating the asylum process in the UK.
As the tweet says the current Conservative Party has adopted every policy of the erstwhile National Front except one. The NF were opposed to corruption while the Tories embrace it with enthusiasm. Braverman even echoes the same narrative on Nazis and betrayal.
Is anyone offering odds on the third party at the next General Election?
If they were, I would probably want 6- or 7-1 on the libdems to surpass the SNP. There's a decent chance, for sure, but despite the SNP's travails, I'd be very surprised to see them drop below 26-32 seats. Simply, there's a bit nationalist vote in Scotland, and one repository (sorry!) for it at a General Election.
And, while I do see the libdems taking seats at the next election, getting above 18-22 is a tough ask. Once you get beyond target six or seven for the libdems, then the majorities they need to overturn start getting quite sizeable. Now, could they benefit - as in 1997 - from sizeable tactical voting? Sure. But they need an awful lot of it once you get to target seat number 20 (Wells), majority 10,000.
Good call, I think it a 20-25% chance so about 6/1 worth a small back. Others suggesting a 10% chance earlier so could see some trade.
A police officer pushed his partner out of a moving car, repeatedly beat her around the head and face and called her “a stupid c***”, a hearing was told.
The officer punched her in the stomach, tried to throw her into a bath of bleach, pulled her across the floor by her hair and even threw semen at her in the shower. The officer faced allegations that he was violent, abusive and used coercive and controlling behaviour against ex-partners who were also police officers.
However the officer, who has since resigned from Sussex police, has been granted anonymity, in part to “protect his welfare”.
If Labour think these plans are so appalling and the numbers so misleading, it is incumbent on them to release THEIR plan to stop the boats. And also the estimate of how many would come under their plan.
In spite of what SKS says in practise labour favour very liberal borders. Not quite open borders but not far off.
Mind you so did new labour and Cameron's Tories but they put nothing in place to support the additional people due to their dishonesty over the matter and not wanting to rock the property boat I'd guess
If Labour are throwing their toys out of the pram over this, they can give us an alternative. Not just guff about "safe and humane routes". Give us details and numbers.
100m due to arrive
Sunak can say he stopped 99m at GE2024
SKS will say he would have stopped 99.5m if he had been in power
Sunak will say Labour would have let in 100m
SKS will say no we wouldnt we have a plan/mission/pledge
And on and on and on
BULLLSSSHHHHIIIITTTT
It started with Blair saying he expected 10,000 per year from the A8 countries, when they joined the EU.
The result is that no-one now believes anything a politician says about immigration.
Sunak is sunk, if the boats don’t actually stop coming.
Maybe
I am more interested in where and when it is going to end than where it started
You are correct though about things starting under Blair.
NHS Foundation Trusts and School Academies both led to privatisation since accelerated of health and education
If Labour think these plans are so appalling and the numbers so misleading, it is incumbent on them to release THEIR plan to stop the boats. And also the estimate of how many would come under their plan.
In spite of what SKS says in practise labour favour very liberal borders. Not quite open borders but not far off.
Mind you so did new labour and Cameron's Tories but they put nothing in place to support the additional people due to their dishonesty over the matter and not wanting to rock the property boat I'd guess
If Labour are throwing their toys out of the pram over this, they can give us an alternative. Not just guff about "safe and humane routes". Give us details and numbers.
100m due to arrive
Sunak can say he stopped 99m at GE2024
SKS will say he would have stopped 99.5m if he had been in power
Sunak will say Labour would have let in 100m
SKS will say no we wouldnt we have a plan/mission/pledge
And on and on and on
BULLLSSSHHHHIIIITTTT
What is bullshit is you claiming anyone has said 100m will arrive.
What does "there are 100m ... they are coming here"" mean
This
Given she seems happy taking things completely out of context, can I cricise her shocking grammar with "boats is"?
Of course, it's best to be careful about typos when (even falsely) cricising[sic]
Sorry off topic but just to respond to @hyufd after I left the thread last night:
You say Grammar schools give parents more choice. They don't. If your child fails the 11 plus they get less choice.
On the 'leftie' nonsense you haven't responded to the fact that I am not a 'leftie' and that successive Conservative governments have done nothing to remove comprehensives and that Tory controlled councils like Surrey implemented and supported them. When I identified David Johnston as a Tory MP who writes against Grammars you call him a leftie. I mean one of your own MPs. You also referred to him as a Heathite. Was Heath's government leftie then? What about Thatcher's government who didn't undo comprehensives? Or Surrey Country Council? All lefties?
Are everyone lefties other than yourself? This is very confusing if most Tories are lefties, especially as many of your own views are indistinguishable from far left authoritarianism.
If you are a working class parent though the evidence Bristol University foundation however was that your child would get better GCSE results than at the local comprehensive.
Heath's government did nothing to stop local authorities turning grammars into comprehensives which had begun when Wilson's government pushed to end selective education(the trend only slowed when Thatcher was PM and slightly reversed with more pupils attending grammars when Major was PM). Hence most of the few remaining areas with grammars are in Tory controlled councils.
You can't even ballot to open new grammars now, only ballot to close them. True parental choice would at least allow that
Not sure whose post you are referring to, but you haven't addressed the points I made, but that is normal for you as you never do.
Are all these Tories I refer to lefties eg Heath's govt, Surrey County Council? Did you really mean to call your own current MPs lefties who support Comprehensive schools? They were your actual words re David Johnson. You have declared every Tory on this site as not being a real Tory at some time or other. You are now doing the same to previous and current govts and Tory controlled councils. Who is left?
Oh I absolutely have.
Tories who want to abolish grammars like David Johnson are a tiny minority of the party and no more really than members of your party, the LDs, who backed Brexit. They are irrelevant, indeed Sunak and Truss both backed grammars in the leadership campaign last year.
I notice you also refuse to allow parents to ballot to open new grammars, just to close them. Not much liberalism and parental choice there from you then!
Re your last paragraph I did no such thing. I have never commented on this point. You are putting words into my mouth. But on that same line how is there more parental choice for parents of children who fail the 11 plus. They have less choice. You are taking choice away from the majority of parents with the Grammars system as you have removed schools from them. You didn't deal with that point.
So lets get this clear then:
All Tory MPs who back Comprehensives are not true Tories. Have you let them know?
Surrey County Council and all Tory County Councils who implemented Comprehensives are not true Tories either
Heath's Government from what you say definitely wasn't Tory then.
Thatcher's govt who did nothing to reverse Comprehensives in her long time as PM couldn't have been Tory either then as she had plenty of time to do something about it
Nobody who posts to this site is a Tory. I note you excommunicated @MarqueeMark and @Sean_F recently.
You say Sunak and Truss back Grammars. How? They are just words. They (well we won't know re Truss) will do zippo to support Grammars. They say this just to keep the loons like you onside.
You can keep posting the link to the Bristol report, but it is has been conclusively accepted by all except a few Tory nutters and UKIP who live in the 1950s that Grammars are bad for the educating the nations children.
Your views on Royalty, Grammars, Church, the nation, etc put you with the group of 90 year old Tory Colonels. You have become an old man 50 years before your time.
30% of voters want more grammars (ie higher than the Conservative voteshare in most current polls except Deltapoll). A further 20% of voters want to retain existing grammars but not build anymore.
Only 26% of voters like you want to stop existing grammars selecting by ability and turn them into comprehensives
Not answering any of the points again, but quoting a 5 year old poll, which confirms that 46% were against new grammar schools and only 30% in favour and that is the best you can do.
So it confirms 30% want more grammar schools which is more than the 26% who like you want to abolish the existing grammar schools
You do know how to misrepresent stuff spectacularly don't you:
a) Read the poll 46% don't want anymore Grammar Schools only 30% do. Excluding the don't knows that is 61% who don't want more Grammar Schools. Do you really think those who want to ban more but don't want to close existing ones are in favour of Grammar schools? If you do you are being exceedingly thick. Why do you think they don't want anymore? How can someone who is in favour of Grammar schools answer a question by then saying they don't want anymore. They can't. Your interpretation is ludicrous. I mean how do you not understand this?
b) The poll is 5 years old for goodness sake. I guess I should be glad it is in this century. Could you not find one that suits your bias that is more recent.
c) The wording of the poll is very poor because each question is ambiguous before it gets to the grammar school bit eg 'encourage more schools to select by academic ability'. It only then makes it clear that it is talking about Grammar schools. I have no issue with schools selecting by academic ability once in the school. I'm very much in favour of setting.
So thanks for that poll. I think you have proved conclusively you are talking bollocks.
a) So 30% want more grammars but only 26% want to close existing grammars. The latter can petition to ballot to close grammars but the former can't petition to open new grammars. How is that fair?
b) Find me another poll that shows a significant difference?
c) Unlike you I don't blame the poll question for a result I dislike
Oh I am more than happy with the result. 61% against grammar schools I think vindicates me.
Re a) are you a complete moron. Do you think the people who don't want more Grammar schools, but don't want to close existing ones are in favour of grammar schools?
Why do you think they don't want more if they are favour of them?
How can you be so stupid?
So 61% are against new Grammar schools. It is as clear as daylight to anyone with half a brain
(I suspect, but we won't know without asking them, that the group that is anti Grammar schools but do not want to close existing ones are just trying to avoid the havoc caused in doing so, but that is my guess)
No. I am not a complete moron, I am just not a hypocrite like you who professes to be a liberal while denying parents the opportunity to petition to ballot to open new grammar schools while allowing parents to petition to ballot to close existing grammars as you prefer the latter position.
The one time there was a successful petition to hold a ballot to close an existing grammar in Ripon, most local parents voted to keep it
My apologies for being rude but you are exasperating.
As I made clear before, and you have ignored that I have never once defended the inequality of the ballot so please don't call me a hypocrite on something I have never said and would never defend.
You have never answered the related question which is introducing Grammars does not give parents more choice as you claim but takes it away from them if, as in the majority, their child fails the 11 plus.
I assume that you now accept that the poll you linked to shows that 61% (excluding don't knows) are not in favour of Grammar Schools.
So on the basis of your second paragraph let us both agree we would support allowing petitions for ballots to open new grammar schools as well as to close existing grammars as now. Let local parents decide if they want selective state schools or not and leave it at that
I haven't put much thought into that so I am not sure. I agree that allowing one group to be allowed a ballot and not the other is very unfair.
I looked at the article about the Ripon one and it looked suspect but it always will be whatever criteria you make for identifying who can vote if it is not every voter in the catchment area. The criteria used otherwise is always going to be criticised as biased by whoever loses. The Ripon ballot was not 'all' local people and that is the issue.
We are a representative democracy so I think the decision should be made at Government level. Whether that is National or Local Government I don't know.
If Labour think these plans are so appalling and the numbers so misleading, it is incumbent on them to release THEIR plan to stop the boats. And also the estimate of how many would come under their plan.
In spite of what SKS says in practise labour favour very liberal borders. Not quite open borders but not far off.
Mind you so did new labour and Cameron's Tories but they put nothing in place to support the additional people due to their dishonesty over the matter and not wanting to rock the property boat I'd guess
If Labour are throwing their toys out of the pram over this, they can give us an alternative. Not just guff about "safe and humane routes". Give us details and numbers.
100m due to arrive
Sunak can say he stopped 99m at GE2024
SKS will say he would have stopped 99.5m if he had been in power
Sunak will say Labour would have let in 100m
SKS will say no we wouldnt we have a plan/mission/pledge
And on and on and on
BULLLSSSHHHHIIIITTTT
What is bullshit is you claiming anyone has said 100m will arrive.
What does "there are 100m ... they are coming here"" mean
This
Given she seems happy taking things completely out of context, can I cricise her shocking grammar with "boats is"?
If Labour think these plans are so appalling and the numbers so misleading, it is incumbent on them to release THEIR plan to stop the boats. And also the estimate of how many would come under their plan.
In spite of what SKS says in practise labour favour very liberal borders. Not quite open borders but not far off.
Mind you so did new labour and Cameron's Tories but they put nothing in place to support the additional people due to their dishonesty over the matter and not wanting to rock the property boat I'd guess
If Labour are throwing their toys out of the pram over this, they can give us an alternative. Not just guff about "safe and humane routes". Give us details and numbers.
100m due to arrive
Sunak can say he stopped 99m at GE2024
SKS will say he would have stopped 99.5m if he had been in power
Sunak will say Labour would have let in 100m
SKS will say no we wouldnt we have a plan/mission/pledge
And on and on and on
BULLLSSSHHHHIIIITTTT
What is bullshit is you claiming anyone has said 100m will arrive.
What does "there are 100m ... they are coming here"" mean
This
Given she seems happy taking things completely out of context, can I cricise her shocking grammar with "boats is"?
To be fair to Ms Braverman and the DM, I rather think 'is' pertains to a subject of the sentence that has been cut off that cutting - maybe 'invasion of' or similar?
Yes, very likely. I fear my intended point of plucking things out of context to make a point (like Braverman's 100 million displaced figure, pointed out by others to include a majority of internally displaced) has been missed
If Labour think these plans are so appalling and the numbers so misleading, it is incumbent on them to release THEIR plan to stop the boats. And also the estimate of how many would come under their plan.
In spite of what SKS says in practise labour favour very liberal borders. Not quite open borders but not far off.
Mind you so did new labour and Cameron's Tories but they put nothing in place to support the additional people due to their dishonesty over the matter and not wanting to rock the property boat I'd guess
If Labour are throwing their toys out of the pram over this, they can give us an alternative. Not just guff about "safe and humane routes". Give us details and numbers.
100m due to arrive
Sunak can say he stopped 99m at GE2024
SKS will say he would have stopped 99.5m if he had been in power
Sunak will say Labour would have let in 100m
SKS will say no we wouldnt we have a plan/mission/pledge
And on and on and on
BULLLSSSHHHHIIIITTTT
What is bullshit is you claiming anyone has said 100m will arrive.
What does "there are 100m ... they are coming here"" mean
This
Given she seems happy taking things completely out of context, can I cricise her shocking grammar with "boats is"?
To be fair to Ms Braverman and the DM, I rather think 'is' pertains to a subject of the sentence that has been cut off that cutting - maybe 'invasion of' or similar?
Yes, very likely. I fear my intended point of plucking things out of context to make a point (like Braverman's 100 million displaced figure, pointed out by others to include a majority of internally displaced) has been missed
Tories think they won the 2019 election partly because of the 'traitors' and 'betrayal' rhetoric surrounding the Brexit shenanigans.
They are hoping to pull the same trick in 2024, as only 'traitors' would oppose the asylum policies advocated by true patriotic 'Brits'. And it's working with some on here.
The debasement of a complex debate and the de-humanising of refugees makes me want to throw up.
As the tweet says the current Conservative Party has adopted every policy of the erstwhile National Front except one. The NF were opposed to corruption while the Tories embrace it with enthusiasm. Braverman even echoes the same narrative on Nazis and betrayal.
When has this Conservative government ever pursued repatriation of legal immigrants as the NF advocated?
I haven't noticed this government advocating bringing back capital punishment either
8/11 is still pretty bad?
The Government hasn't stopped all immigration either.
So that's a no to all the extreme proposals there.
Its worth noting that like all extremists do, some of the other proposals are what the Americans would call "motherhood and Apple Pie" stuff and that is what has been done.
Extremists love to put a bunch of nice and reasonable sounding slogans in, with their hateful and extreme ones mixed in. That way the hateful and extreme ones get read alongside people nodding along and thinking "yes combatting unemployment is a good idea" and the other ideas sound more reasonable in that context too.
Unfortunately what's more worthy of criticism is that this Conservative Government hasn't achieved the sensible proposals either. "Encourage free enterprise" - not with Hunt and Sunak's tax rises they haven't!
As the tweet says the current Conservative Party has adopted every policy of the erstwhile National Front except one. The NF were opposed to corruption while the Tories embrace it with enthusiasm. Braverman even echoes the same narrative on Nazis and betrayal.
When has this Conservative government ever pursued repatriation of legal immigrants as the NF advocated?
I haven't noticed this government advocating bringing back capital punishment either
8/11 is still pretty bad?
The Government hasn't stopped all immigration either.
So that's a no to all the extreme proposals there.
Its worth noting that like all extremists do, some of the other proposals are what the Americans would call "motherhood and Apple Pie" stuff and that is what has been done.
Extremists love to put a bunch of nice and reasonable sounding slogans in, with their hateful and extreme ones mixed in. That way the hateful and extreme ones get read alongside people nodding along and thinking "yes combatting unemployment is a good idea" and the other ideas sound more reasonable in that context too.
Unfortunately what's more worthy of criticism is that this Conservative Government hasn't achieved the sensible proposals either. "Encourage free enterprise" - not with Hunt and Sunak's tax rises they haven't!
Ah, I haven't actually read the thing. Just working on the combination of FF43's and HYUFD's claimed missed policies. I assumed HUYFD would be thorough in listing unimplemented policies
If Labour think these plans are so appalling and the numbers so misleading, it is incumbent on them to release THEIR plan to stop the boats. And also the estimate of how many would come under their plan.
In spite of what SKS says in practise labour favour very liberal borders. Not quite open borders but not far off.
Mind you so did new labour and Cameron's Tories but they put nothing in place to support the additional people due to their dishonesty over the matter and not wanting to rock the property boat I'd guess
If Labour are throwing their toys out of the pram over this, they can give us an alternative. Not just guff about "safe and humane routes". Give us details and numbers.
100m due to arrive
Sunak can say he stopped 99m at GE2024
SKS will say he would have stopped 99.5m if he had been in power
Sunak will say Labour would have let in 100m
SKS will say no we wouldnt we have a plan/mission/pledge
And on and on and on
BULLLSSSHHHHIIIITTTT
What is bullshit is you claiming anyone has said 100m will arrive.
What does "there are 100m ... they are coming here"" mean
This
"TSE is just another LEFTY LAWYER standing in our way!"
Sunak calls Starmer another 'leftie lawyer' who voted against deportations of illegal immigrants at PMQs
Two cheeks, same arse.
Oh and Sunak has repeated Braverman's billions of asylum seeker lies.
He has just said at the dispatch box that 100 million is the UN estimate
It's nonsense. Check out Susannah this morning. This number includes the displaced people from the Turkish earthquake. It is displaced people throughout the world and not the number of people displaced who plan to arrive at Dover in a boat. You have been taken in. In fairness Sunak was careful not to add Braverman's later statement about them all wanting to come to the UK
When you say I have been taken in I heard the 100 million estimate many times previously from many different sources not just the UN and it seems generally accepted
Do you think all 100 million will come to the UK as is the inference by rule breaking Rishi and the disgraced national security risk Braverman?
Remember the last lot, or the one before, or the one before, were going to prosecute the RNLI and its involved members, crews, local branches, etc. for people trafficking. Till they backed down. But only when the bill in question was well on the way.
May I make a suggestion to our Conservative friends? I feel they have not put their hearts into this issue. What about.....
a. Introduce the category of "slave" in this country. These are people who have no rights whatsoever, and therefore lawyers cannot be brought in to defend them.
b. Enact that all people who are in this country illegally are deemed to be slaves. They do not even have any rights to property, so all their possessions can be confiscated.
c. And people who introduce slaves into this country are worthy of capital punishment. And we just have to execute (in public, of course, for the sake of publicity) one or two and the word would soon get around.
I feel that such policies would appeal to the bulk of the Conservative electorate, and would soon re-establish the Conservative Party as front runners.
It might be argued that this proposal would introduce three categories of people, who would receive differential treatment. I accept this argument.
However, at present we do have two categories of people: those to whom the law applies (most of us), and those who think they are above the law and behave accordingly. As evidence of the second category, I offer you various members of the government, past and present.
How would these suggestions go down with true Conservatives (tm), Young HY?
Sunak calls Starmer another 'leftie lawyer' who voted against deportations of illegal immigrants at PMQs
Two cheeks, same arse.
Oh and Sunak has repeated Braverman's billions of asylum seeker lies.
He has just said at the dispatch box that 100 million is the UN estimate
It's nonsense. Check out Susannah this morning. This number includes the displaced people from the Turkish earthquake. It is displaced people throughout the world and not the number of people displaced who plan to arrive at Dover in a boat. You have been taken in. In fairness Sunak was careful not to add Braverman's later statement about them all wanting to come to the UK
When you say I have been taken in I heard the 100 million estimate many times previously from many different sources not just the UN and it seems generally accepted
Once again, there are 100 million displaced people as suggested by the UN (who would argue with that?). The point Suella made is all of them and billions besides want to come to the UK in small boats. A lie. Sunak used the 100m figure to confuse, and by the look of it he confused many, including your goodself.
Sunak calls Starmer another 'leftie lawyer' who voted against deportations of illegal immigrants at PMQs
Two cheeks, same arse.
Oh and Sunak has repeated Braverman's billions of asylum seeker lies.
He has just said at the dispatch box that 100 million is the UN estimate
It's nonsense. Check out Susannah this morning. This number includes the displaced people from the Turkish earthquake. It is displaced people throughout the world and not the number of people displaced who plan to arrive at Dover in a boat. You have been taken in. In fairness Sunak was careful not to add Braverman's later statement about them all wanting to come to the UK
Sunak and Braverman don’t believe a word of it either. They’re just electioneering. It’s almost all the Tory government do: government for them is one long referendum campaign.
That’s why last week’s deal on NI felt such an outlier. Seems a long time ago doesn’t it? Since then we’ve had Boristas working up into a lather about partygate again, and Suella channelling Farage.
Sunak appears to me to be rather uncomfortable. Cruella on the other hand is lapping up the attention.
The obvious sexism in the nickname really reveals who you are.
It isn't remotely sexist. I believe the lady to be fundamentally evil.
Suella De Vil Suella De Vil If she doesn't scare you No evil thing will…
If Labour think these plans are so appalling and the numbers so misleading, it is incumbent on them to release THEIR plan to stop the boats. And also the estimate of how many would come under their plan.
In spite of what SKS says in practise labour favour very liberal borders. Not quite open borders but not far off.
Mind you so did new labour and Cameron's Tories but they put nothing in place to support the additional people due to their dishonesty over the matter and not wanting to rock the property boat I'd guess
If Labour are throwing their toys out of the pram over this, they can give us an alternative. Not just guff about "safe and humane routes". Give us details and numbers.
100m due to arrive
Sunak can say he stopped 99m at GE2024
SKS will say he would have stopped 99.5m if he had been in power
Sunak will say Labour would have let in 100m
SKS will say no we wouldnt we have a plan/mission/pledge
And on and on and on
BULLLSSSHHHHIIIITTTT
What is bullshit is you claiming anyone has said 100m will arrive.
What does "there are 100m ... they are coming here"" mean
This
I don't think she's wrong.
If they could get here, they would. The only constraints are (a) personal endurance/resilience of the individuals (b) the market price of the people smuggler's passage and (c) the capacity of that industry to transport them.
Sunak calls Starmer another 'leftie lawyer' who voted against deportations of illegal immigrants at PMQs
Two cheeks, same arse.
Oh and Sunak has repeated Braverman's billions of asylum seeker lies.
He has just said at the dispatch box that 100 million is the UN estimate
It's nonsense. Check out Susannah this morning. This number includes the displaced people from the Turkish earthquake. It is displaced people throughout the world and not the number of people displaced who plan to arrive at Dover in a boat. You have been taken in. In fairness Sunak was careful not to add Braverman's later statement about them all wanting to come to the UK
When you say I have been taken in I heard the 100 million estimate many times previously from many different sources not just the UN and it seems generally accepted
Do you think all 100 million will come to the UK as is the inference by rule breaking Rishi and the disgraced national security risk Braverman?
Remember the last lot, or the one before, or the one before, were going to prosecute the RNLI and its involved members, crews, local branches, etc. for people trafficking. Till they backed down. But only when the bill in question was well on the way.
May I make a suggestion to our Conservative friends? I feel they have not put their hearts into this issue. What about.....
a. Introduce the category of "slave" in this country. These are people who have no rights whatsoever, and therefore lawyers cannot be brought in to defend them.
b. Enact that all people who are in this country illegally are deemed to be slaves. They do not even have any rights to property, so all their possessions can be confiscated.
c. And people who introduce slaves into this country are worthy of capital punishment. And we just have to execute (in public, of course, for the sake of publicity) one or two and the word would soon get around.
I feel that such policies would appeal to the bulk of the Conservative electorate, and would soon re-establish the Conservative Party as front runners.
It might be argued that this proposal would introduce three categories of people, who would receive differential treatment. I accept this argument.
However, at present we do have two categories of people: those to whom the law applies (most of us), and those who think they are above the law and behave accordingly. As evidence of the second category, I offer you various members of the government, past and present.
How would these suggestions go down with true Conservatives (tm), Young HY?
Apart from reflecting on the further possibilities (viz: Swift's Modest Proposal), my reaction was that it wouldn't work. The thought of free labour would be like catnip for those few remaining business supporters of the Tory Party - though on further reflection, it surely would attract many repelled by the Johnsonian doctrine of "**** Business". So it might not work that well in maintaining native wages ...
Had a chat with a barrister with impeccably right wing credentials and no fan of illegal border crossings.
Says yesterday's legislation is simply the worst piece of drafted legislation he has ever seen.
Like it was focus grouped and then drafted.
He feels sorry for the GLD teams that will have to defend this shit in court.
There's a retroactive clause in the bill that must have been written by Lionel Hutz.
It isn't serious law. Braverman sends a letter to Tory MPs saying she doesn't know if the bill is legal but there is "a greater than 50% chance" it isn't.
Then we get Dishi in front of a Stop The Boats lectern. Speaking in his Jackanory voice. Quite literally telling stories to political toddlers.
They know the plan - laughable to even use that word - doesn't work practically. They know it doesn't work legally. But they also know their remaining voters don't care, they just want action. Though I don't think "blame the courts" works as an excuse any longer.
The third plan in three years and legislation so obviously designed for dividing lines rather than results is too obviously transparent to fool most voters. And making Braverman the face of it just compounds the problem. She is massively unpopular.
I really can’t see it ending well for Sunak. The people he is targeting are those most likely to buy the Farage/Reform betrayal narrative that will inevitably explode into the right-wing press this summer when the boats keep on coming.
Cooper was right yesterday: people want results, not performative gestures that won’t work.
In a serious question:
How *would* anyone stop the boats?
It doesn't seem to me, short of major military operations on the beaches of Northern France, which ain't happening, or arranging odd accidents for all the traffickers - and even that would presumably pause rather than eliminate the problem - that there's much to be done about it.
That doesn't mean we can't still point and laugh at the stupidity of this idea, but are there are any concrete suggestions? If so, let's hear them.
Stopping the boats, if that's your main aim, is pretty simple. A UK asylum centre in Calais and ferry tickets to Dover.
Stopping boats without letting people in another way? Can't help you there.
Is it that simple? Will the Albanians simply give up when rejected at Calais?
Quite possibly. But it reduces the numbers of boat people, which makes it easier to catch and return those who remain.
Part of our problem at the moment is that the rate of people coming in vastly exceeds our state ability to process them.
So the UK is reduced to bloodcurdling threats that it probably can't carry out. Partly human rights law, but partly because the UK state can't reliably carry out anything. Trust me- that tends not to work.
Pitiful
Making asylum easier to claim at Calais - then giving the lucky ones tickets for the Dover Ferry - will just INCREASE the pull factor of Calais
Tens of thousands more will try. What will those that fail then do? Will they think “shit, at least the UK gave me a fair go, oh well, now I’ll head back to Albania/Somalia”
Or will they simply try and cross illegally? As before, but in even greater numbers?
You don’t have an answer which doesn’t make you extremely uncomfortable. So you would rather provide no answer at all. It’s a kind of cowardice
If you provide safe routes, then there is far less argument legally about those who choose not to use them.
Where are we going to deport them? We are incapable of deporting anyone because liberal lawyers go mad and Gary lineker calls you goebbels and everyone is pathetically spineless
And if we did start actually deporting those that failed the Calais asylum test then they’d all go back to destroying their documents and using the dinghies
It’s just another pitifuf non answer. It is pathetic
Liberal lawyers going mad or staying sane does not change the law.
If you want the policy objectives that the govt is pushing with their policy you need to be angry with the govt for not leaving the refugee convention not liberal lawyers.
I have not read the proposed Bill or much of the news regarding it so can't comment specifically on the proposed Bill.
However Australia is in the Refugee Convention and has had a similar policy before. Which was ruled legal by its domestic Courts. And the policy has worked in its objectives.
If you disagree with the policy, then that should be a matter for political debate, not legal arguments. If Parliament passes a law saying this is legal, then that should be the law, just as it was elsewhere.
You dont need my opinion, the government does not think it legal!
Has the Government put a "notwithstanding" clause in?
If so, then its legal, is it not?
Get Betfair to put a market up and happy to accommodate backers of legal.
Parliament sets the law. If Parliament says something is legal, then it is legal.
Men marrying other men wasn't legal. Parliament changed the law, now it is. That is what Parliament is for.
Have you heard of international law?
Yes. Its a bad joke.
Parliament can override international law.
It can't override it, it can legislate to make it unenforceable in the UK. The UK then lives with the consequences of that because the international law still exists. In the case of the illegal immigration legislation, though, the government is saying it is not acting contrary to international law or seeking to make it unenforceable.
We live with the consequences then, if that is what we choose to do, that is a matter for politics not lawyers.
If Parliament passes a Bill overriding international law domestically, eg by legalising cannabis which I wholeheartedly support in violation of international law, then there are no international courts that can override the UK Parliament. Nor should there be.
Or the UN Declaration on Human Rights, that asserts the rights of all human beings to live in dignity regardless of ethnic origin, or the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Or the Geneva Conventions. Do you think the sovereign body in any sovereign country ought to be able to renege on any international law it wishes to, so long as it only does so domestically? So for example the Brazilian parliament could decide to exterminate the Yanomami people and they shouldn't be held responsible before an international court if they did?
Yes I 100% think any sovereign body ought to be able to renege on any international law it wishes to do so, domestically.
If the Brazilian Parliament chose to exterminate a people then that would be a matter for international relations to resolve, not lawyers or courts. Just as China's acts of genocide against the Rohingya and others.
A genuinely robust international legal system that punishes and deters such atrocities, regardless of who commits them and where they happen, is a challenging aspiration, but it's a bit odd to say it isn't a worthwhile one.
Its not a worthwhile one, because the meaning of atrocity changes. The problem is what's good today can be awful in the future, or vice-versa/
The law should be a living, breathing, and most importantly evolving body - which is what Parliament is for.
If you go back just ten years it was illegal for two men to marry each other in Scotland. If you go back ~fifty years it was illegal for two men to love each other and could result in imprisonment. If you go back hundreds of years, it could result in execution.
You operate as if international law is "good" so should be set in stone, but the law has never been that way. Ossifying laws in stone is how you end up with the madness that is the US Second Amendment and routine mass murder in schools. Ossifying laws in stone is how you end up with gays being stoned to death.
If an international law signed in the 50s put a prohibition on same sex marriage, then I think Parliament would be well within its rights to say that notwithstanding the law we are legalising it. If an international law signed in the 18th century had a Second Amendment style ruling then following Dunblane I'd think that Parliament is perfectly entitled to say that the law needs to change.
We should seek to tackle atrocities internationally, but that needs to be done via international relations, not laws locking in the views of the past to be enforced in the future.
A robust and dynamic international legal system then. One which moves with the times as all good legal systems should. To inter alia punish and deter atrocities. As I say, most odd to not at least grant this to be a worthwhile aspiration. Still, you're you. With your reverence for the Nation State.
It is not a reverence for the Nation State, it is a reverence for democracy. Democracy is attached to the Nation State.
Our legal system evolves with the times due to Parliament, and we have routine elections to Parliament.
If you want international law to evolve with the times and not be ossified to the past saying that cannabis must be illegal/gays must be stoned/second amendment etc then without a global Parliament how do you achieve that?
And if there is a global Parliament, then haven't you just globalised all the issues you decry with the Nation State?
If a local council in a deeply conservative part of the country wished to ban homosexuality in accordance with local demand we would say to them and their voters, "Nope, sorry, not on. There's a higher law against you doing that."
IOW some things are too important to be left to the voters. It's therefore not just about democracy. It's about where is the best place in an ideal world - since I did say 'aspiration' remember - for certain fundamental human rights to be protected.
Asserting this is always and forever the nation state, ie there can never be anything so important it can't be left to voters at this level of aggregation, is illogical. It comes from, as I say, revering the nation state itself. Which is what you do, what many people do tbf, odd as it might appear to me.
Sunak calls Starmer another 'leftie lawyer' who voted against deportations of illegal immigrants at PMQs
Two cheeks, same arse.
Oh and Sunak has repeated Braverman's billions of asylum seeker lies.
He has just said at the dispatch box that 100 million is the UN estimate
And billions isn't a lie either as I think it was the IPCC that forecast about 2 billion displaced due to climate change by 2050
The relevant point about the numbers is that the total number of boat people wanting to come into the country exceeds the total number of boat people - zero - that the majority of the electorate wishes to see come into the country. The rest is noise.
Nor can this be solved solely by international agreements to try to defeat people trafficking, pleading with the French to deploy more police to the Channel coast, or the much-discussed safe and legal routes for migration - however desirable all of these measures, especially the latter, are. Unless the number of people that the electorate wishes to admit through the safe and legal routes is as large as the total number who want to come in - which it won't be - then those refused will simply travel and get in the boats anyway.
The Government's core argument - that the boat people problem will only stop when it is made clear to migrants that their journey is guaranteed to end in failure - is, therefore, correct. We've known that it was correct all along, really. The Australian precedent proves it. The Government's problem in getting to that destination is, of course, that its situation is more complicated. Australia had to deal with small numbers of large boats not large numbers of small ones, and it didn't have to cope with the constant threat of injunctions from Strasbourg, either. The latter is the more pressing problem.
If I had to guess where this was all headed, it will be with the Government failing to stop the boats again - partly through unwillingness to pay for proper enforcement, partly through its new legislation being neutralised by the ECHR - and pressure being placed on the Tory leadership to withdraw from both the ECHR and the UN Refugee Convention. They probably won't put that in the manifesto, but it wouldn't happen anyway because they'll lose the next election. After that Labour will do nothing effective about the issue - both because the next Government will be as powerless as the last, AND it doesn't want to anyway - so it'll just continue to get worse.
It's an ideal campaign theme for an Orban-type populist, set against the backdrop of the broader disintegration of society caused by a surfeit of old people, a deficit of taxpayers, and the rotting away of an economy too rooted in property speculation to do anything productive.
Britain will need to make annual multimillion-pound payments to France to fix the small boats crisis in the Channel, President Macron will tell Rishi Sunak at a meeting in Paris this week.
The French president is demanding a multi-year settlement to put “boots on the ground” on the beaches of northern France.
If Labour think these plans are so appalling and the numbers so misleading, it is incumbent on them to release THEIR plan to stop the boats. And also the estimate of how many would come under their plan.
In spite of what SKS says in practise labour favour very liberal borders. Not quite open borders but not far off.
Mind you so did new labour and Cameron's Tories but they put nothing in place to support the additional people due to their dishonesty over the matter and not wanting to rock the property boat I'd guess
If Labour are throwing their toys out of the pram over this, they can give us an alternative. Not just guff about "safe and humane routes". Give us details and numbers.
100m due to arrive
Sunak can say he stopped 99m at GE2024
SKS will say he would have stopped 99.5m if he had been in power
Sunak will say Labour would have let in 100m
SKS will say no we wouldnt we have a plan/mission/pledge
And on and on and on
BULLLSSSHHHHIIIITTTT
What is bullshit is you claiming anyone has said 100m will arrive.
What does "there are 100m ... they are coming here"" mean
This
"TSE is just another LEFTY LAWYER standing in our way!"
Let’s be honest, the small boats issue is a complicated and nuanced issue and most of our politicians and news media don’t deal in complexity and nuance.
The solution is an integrated approach - more money to deal with the asylum backlog, a more accessible and responsive asylum process, closer co-operation with Europe (ho-hum) and yes disincentivising the concept of trying to enter the country illegally.
Unfortunately because we are so polarised and because of the lack of complexity and nuance speaking about any one of these things in depth immediately marks you out as either a lefty loony liberal or a raving nazi. I don’t have much faith in Starmer to reset this situation but I have more than the chancers in government.
Spot on.
This is a classic Silver Bullet Fallacy issue, when the answer is to have multiple overlapping policies:
- dramatically faster processing of asylum applications: the Netherlands manages the vast majority of theirs in three months, and that means you don't have lots of people *seeking* asylum hanging around - offshore processing centers - a proper clampdown on those who employ (or profit from) illegal immigrants. - cooperation with the French to discourage small boats.
It is also worth remembering that the UK had 50% more asylum seekers arriving back in 2002 (close to 100,000) - so while the boats may have made it slightly easier, there are many ways and means for people to enter the UK and to claim asylum. The boats just make it much more visible.
Sunak calls Starmer another 'leftie lawyer' who voted against deportations of illegal immigrants at PMQs
Two cheeks, same arse.
Oh and Sunak has repeated Braverman's billions of asylum seeker lies.
He has just said at the dispatch box that 100 million is the UN estimate
And billions isn't a lie either as I think it was the IPCC that forecast about 2 billion displaced due to climate change by 2050
The relevant point about the numbers is that the total number of boat people wanting to come into the country exceeds the total number of boat people - zero - that the majority of the electorate wishes to see come into the country. The rest is noise.
Nor can this be solved solely by international agreements to try to defeat people trafficking, pleading with the French to deploy more police to the Channel coast, or the much-discussed safe and legal routes for migration - however desirable all of these measures, especially the latter, are. Unless the number of people that the electorate wishes to admit through the safe and legal routes is as large as the total number who want to come in - which it won't be - then those refused will simply travel and get in the boats anyway.
The Government's core argument - that the boat people problem will only stop when it is made clear to migrants that their journey is guaranteed to end in failure - is, therefore, correct. We've known that it was correct all along, really. The Australian precedent proves it. The Government's problem in getting to that destination is, of course, that its situation is more complicated. Australia had to deal with small numbers of large boats not large numbers of small ones, and it didn't have to cope with the constant threat of injunctions from Strasbourg, either. The latter is the more pressing problem.
If I had to guess where this was all headed, it will be with the Government failing to stop the boats again - partly through unwillingness to pay for proper enforcement, partly through its new legislation being neutralised by the ECHR - and pressure being placed on the Tory leadership to withdraw from both the ECHR and the UN Refugee Convention. They probably won't put that in the manifesto, but it wouldn't happen anyway because they'll lose the next election. After that Labour will do nothing effective about the issue - both because the next Government will be as powerless as the last, AND it doesn't want to anyway - so it'll just continue to get worse.
It's an ideal campaign theme for an Orban-type populist, set against the backdrop of the broader disintegration of society caused by a surfeit of old people, a deficit of taxpayers, and the rotting away of an economy too rooted in property speculation to do anything productive.
Bang on, and entirely right
Absolutely,
It's peak Godwin on here this afternoon but, if Godwin is going to be played, it should be with an eye to what may happen in 5-15 years if nothing is done about this.
Sunak calls Starmer another 'leftie lawyer' who voted against deportations of illegal immigrants at PMQs
Two cheeks, same arse.
Oh and Sunak has repeated Braverman's billions of asylum seeker lies.
He has just said at the dispatch box that 100 million is the UN estimate
It's nonsense. Check out Susannah this morning. This number includes the displaced people from the Turkish earthquake. It is displaced people throughout the world and not the number of people displaced who plan to arrive at Dover in a boat. You have been taken in. In fairness Sunak was careful not to add Braverman's later statement about them all wanting to come to the UK
When you say I have been taken in I heard the 100 million estimate many times previously from many different sources not just the UN and it seems generally accepted
Do you think all 100 million will come to the UK as is the inference by rule breaking Rishi and the disgraced national security risk Braverman?
Remember the last lot, or the one before, or the one before, were going to prosecute the RNLI and its involved members, crews, local branches, etc. for people trafficking. Till they backed down. But only when the bill in question was well on the way.
May I make a suggestion to our Conservative friends? I feel they have not put their hearts into this issue. What about.....
a. Introduce the category of "slave" in this country. These are people who have no rights whatsoever, and therefore lawyers cannot be brought in to defend them.
b. Enact that all people who are in this country illegally are deemed to be slaves. They do not even have any rights to property, so all their possessions can be confiscated.
c. And people who introduce slaves into this country are worthy of capital punishment. And we just have to execute (in public, of course, for the sake of publicity) one or two and the word would soon get around.
I feel that such policies would appeal to the bulk of the Conservative electorate, and would soon re-establish the Conservative Party as front runners.
It might be argued that this proposal would introduce three categories of people, who would receive differential treatment. I accept this argument.
However, at present we do have two categories of people: those to whom the law applies (most of us), and those who think they are above the law and behave accordingly. As evidence of the second category, I offer you various members of the government, past and present.
How would these suggestions go down with true Conservatives (tm), Young HY?
That’s the policy the EU paid the Libyans to implement.
Sunak calls Starmer another 'leftie lawyer' who voted against deportations of illegal immigrants at PMQs
Two cheeks, same arse.
Oh and Sunak has repeated Braverman's billions of asylum seeker lies.
He has just said at the dispatch box that 100 million is the UN estimate
And billions isn't a lie either as I think it was the IPCC that forecast about 2 billion displaced due to climate change by 2050
The relevant point about the numbers is that the total number of boat people wanting to come into the country exceeds the total number of boat people - zero - that the majority of the electorate wishes to see come into the country. The rest is noise.
Nor can this be solved solely by international agreements to try to defeat people trafficking, pleading with the French to deploy more police to the Channel coast, or the much-discussed safe and legal routes for migration - however desirable all of these measures, especially the latter, are. Unless the number of people that the electorate wishes to admit through the safe and legal routes is as large as the total number who want to come in - which it won't be - then those refused will simply travel and get in the boats anyway.
The Government's core argument - that the boat people problem will only stop when it is made clear to migrants that their journey is guaranteed to end in failure - is, therefore, correct. We've known that it was correct all along, really. The Australian precedent proves it. The Government's problem in getting to that destination is, of course, that its situation is more complicated. Australia had to deal with small numbers of large boats not large numbers of small ones, and it didn't have to cope with the constant threat of injunctions from Strasbourg, either. The latter is the more pressing problem.
If I had to guess where this was all headed, it will be with the Government failing to stop the boats again - partly through unwillingness to pay for proper enforcement, partly through its new legislation being neutralised by the ECHR - and pressure being placed on the Tory leadership to withdraw from both the ECHR and the UN Refugee Convention. They probably won't put that in the manifesto, but it wouldn't happen anyway because they'll lose the next election. After that Labour will do nothing effective about the issue - both because the next Government will be as powerless as the last, AND it doesn't want to anyway - so it'll just continue to get worse.
It's an ideal campaign theme for an Orban-type populist, set against the backdrop of the broader disintegration of society caused by a surfeit of old people, a deficit of taxpayers, and the rotting away of an economy too rooted in property speculation to do anything productive.
Let’s be honest, the small boats issue is a complicated and nuanced issue and most of our politicians and news media don’t deal in complexity and nuance.
The solution is an integrated approach - more money to deal with the asylum backlog, a more accessible and responsive asylum process, closer co-operation with Europe (ho-hum) and yes disincentivising the concept of trying to enter the country illegally.
Unfortunately because we are so polarised and because of the lack of complexity and nuance speaking about any one of these things in depth immediately marks you out as either a lefty loony liberal or a raving nazi. I don’t have much faith in Starmer to reset this situation but I have more than the chancers in government.
Spot on.
This is a classic Silver Bullet Fallacy issue, when the answer is to have multiple overlapping policies:
- dramatically faster processing of asylum applications: the Netherlands manages the vast majority of theirs in three months, and that means you don't have lots of people *seeking* asylum hanging around - offshore processing centers - a proper clampdown on those who employ (or profit from) illegal immigrants. - cooperation with the French to discourage small boats. It is also worth remembering that the UK had 50% more asylum seekers arriving back in 2002 (close to 100,000) - so while the boats may have made it slightly easier, there are many ways and means for people to enter the UK and to claim asylum. The boats just make it much more visible.
Are the people arrivng on boats intending to claim asylum - or is that their Plan B if they get caught, rather than arrivng on the beach and disappearing into the black economy?
If Labour think these plans are so appalling and the numbers so misleading, it is incumbent on them to release THEIR plan to stop the boats. And also the estimate of how many would come under their plan.
In spite of what SKS says in practise labour favour very liberal borders. Not quite open borders but not far off.
Mind you so did new labour and Cameron's Tories but they put nothing in place to support the additional people due to their dishonesty over the matter and not wanting to rock the property boat I'd guess
If Labour are throwing their toys out of the pram over this, they can give us an alternative. Not just guff about "safe and humane routes". Give us details and numbers.
100m due to arrive
Sunak can say he stopped 99m at GE2024
SKS will say he would have stopped 99.5m if he had been in power
Sunak will say Labour would have let in 100m
SKS will say no we wouldnt we have a plan/mission/pledge
And on and on and on
BULLLSSSHHHHIIIITTTT
What is bullshit is you claiming anyone has said 100m will arrive.
What does "there are 100m ... they are coming here"" mean
This
"TSE is just another LEFTY LAWYER standing in our way!"
I am much a lefty lawyer as Margaret Thatcher.
In Suella Braverman's Conservative Party, Margaret Thatcher would be seen as a hand-wringing lefty lawyer too.
Sunak calls Starmer another 'leftie lawyer' who voted against deportations of illegal immigrants at PMQs
Two cheeks, same arse.
Oh and Sunak has repeated Braverman's billions of asylum seeker lies.
He has just said at the dispatch box that 100 million is the UN estimate
It's nonsense. Check out Susannah this morning. This number includes the displaced people from the Turkish earthquake. It is displaced people throughout the world and not the number of people displaced who plan to arrive at Dover in a boat. You have been taken in. In fairness Sunak was careful not to add Braverman's later statement about them all wanting to come to the UK
When you say I have been taken in I heard the 100 million estimate many times previously from many different sources not just the UN and it seems generally accepted
Do you think all 100 million will come to the UK as is the inference by rule breaking Rishi and the disgraced national security risk Braverman?
Remember the last lot, or the one before, or the one before, were going to prosecute the RNLI and its involved members, crews, local branches, etc. for people trafficking. Till they backed down. But only when the bill in question was well on the way.
May I make a suggestion to our Conservative friends? I feel they have not put their hearts into this issue. What about.....
a. Introduce the category of "slave" in this country. These are people who have no rights whatsoever, and therefore lawyers cannot be brought in to defend them.
b. Enact that all people who are in this country illegally are deemed to be slaves. They do not even have any rights to property, so all their possessions can be confiscated.
c. And people who introduce slaves into this country are worthy of capital punishment. And we just have to execute (in public, of course, for the sake of publicity) one or two and the word would soon get around.
I feel that such policies would appeal to the bulk of the Conservative electorate, and would soon re-establish the Conservative Party as front runners.
It might be argued that this proposal would introduce three categories of people, who would receive differential treatment. I accept this argument.
However, at present we do have two categories of people: those to whom the law applies (most of us), and those who think they are above the law and behave accordingly. As evidence of the second category, I offer you various members of the government, past and present.
How would these suggestions go down with true Conservatives (tm), Young HY?
Apart from reflecting on the further possibilities (viz: Swift's Modest Proposal), my reaction was that it wouldn't work. The thought of free labour would be like catnip for those few remaining business supporters of the Tory Party - though on further reflection, it surely would attract many repelled by the Johnsonian doctrine of "**** Business". So it might not work that well in maintaining native wages ...
Much of the opposition to Slavery in the US wasn’t just on moral grounds - it was that small, free farmers couldn’t compete with slave powered agribusiness, on labour costs.
Let’s be honest, the small boats issue is a complicated and nuanced issue and most of our politicians and news media don’t deal in complexity and nuance.
The solution is an integrated approach - more money to deal with the asylum backlog, a more accessible and responsive asylum process, closer co-operation with Europe (ho-hum) and yes disincentivising the concept of trying to enter the country illegally.
Unfortunately because we are so polarised and because of the lack of complexity and nuance speaking about any one of these things in depth immediately marks you out as either a lefty loony liberal or a raving nazi. I don’t have much faith in Starmer to reset this situation but I have more than the chancers in government.
Spot on.
This is a classic Silver Bullet Fallacy issue, when the answer is to have multiple overlapping policies:
- dramatically faster processing of asylum applications: the Netherlands manages the vast majority of theirs in three months, and that means you don't have lots of people *seeking* asylum hanging around - offshore processing centers - a proper clampdown on those who employ (or profit from) illegal immigrants. - cooperation with the French to discourage small boats.
It is also worth remembering that the UK had 50% more asylum seekers arriving back in 2002 (close to 100,000) - so while the boats may have made it slightly easier, there are many ways and means for people to enter the UK and to claim asylum. The boats just make it much more visible.
Not forgetting working to help in the original countries to make them less want to leaveable.
The answer to global migration flows is for everyone to get richer.
Let’s be honest, the small boats issue is a complicated and nuanced issue and most of our politicians and news media don’t deal in complexity and nuance.
The solution is an integrated approach - more money to deal with the asylum backlog, a more accessible and responsive asylum process, closer co-operation with Europe (ho-hum) and yes disincentivising the concept of trying to enter the country illegally.
Unfortunately because we are so polarised and because of the lack of complexity and nuance speaking about any one of these things in depth immediately marks you out as either a lefty loony liberal or a raving nazi. I don’t have much faith in Starmer to reset this situation but I have more than the chancers in government.
Spot on.
This is a classic Silver Bullet Fallacy issue, when the answer is to have multiple overlapping policies:
- dramatically faster processing of asylum applications: the Netherlands manages the vast majority of theirs in three months, and that means you don't have lots of people *seeking* asylum hanging around - offshore processing centers - a proper clampdown on those who employ (or profit from) illegal immigrants. - cooperation with the French to discourage small boats. It is also worth remembering that the UK had 50% more asylum seekers arriving back in 2002 (close to 100,000) - so while the boats may have made it slightly easier, there are many ways and means for people to enter the UK and to claim asylum. The boats just make it much more visible.
Are the people arrivng on boats intending to claim asylum - or is that their Plan B if they get caught, rather than arrivng on the beach and disappearing into the black economy?
A large majority IIRC of asylum seekers have their claims accepted.
Sunak calls Starmer another 'leftie lawyer' who voted against deportations of illegal immigrants at PMQs
Two cheeks, same arse.
Oh and Sunak has repeated Braverman's billions of asylum seeker lies.
He has just said at the dispatch box that 100 million is the UN estimate
And billions isn't a lie either as I think it was the IPCC that forecast about 2 billion displaced due to climate change by 2050
The relevant point about the numbers is that the total number of boat people wanting to come into the country exceeds the total number of boat people - zero - that the majority of the electorate wishes to see come into the country. The rest is noise.
Nor can this be solved solely by international agreements to try to defeat people trafficking, pleading with the French to deploy more police to the Channel coast, or the much-discussed safe and legal routes for migration - however desirable all of these measures, especially the latter, are. Unless the number of people that the electorate wishes to admit through the safe and legal routes is as large as the total number who want to come in - which it won't be - then those refused will simply travel and get in the boats anyway.
The Government's core argument - that the boat people problem will only stop when it is made clear to migrants that their journey is guaranteed to end in failure - is, therefore, correct. We've known that it was correct all along, really. The Australian precedent proves it. The Government's problem in getting to that destination is, of course, that its situation is more complicated. Australia had to deal with small numbers of large boats not large numbers of small ones, and it didn't have to cope with the constant threat of injunctions from Strasbourg, either. The latter is the more pressing problem.
If I had to guess where this was all headed, it will be with the Government failing to stop the boats again - partly through unwillingness to pay for proper enforcement, partly through its new legislation being neutralised by the ECHR - and pressure being placed on the Tory leadership to withdraw from both the ECHR and the UN Refugee Convention. They probably won't put that in the manifesto, but it wouldn't happen anyway because they'll lose the next election. After that Labour will do nothing effective about the issue - both because the next Government will be as powerless as the last, AND it doesn't want to anyway - so it'll just continue to get worse.
It's an ideal campaign theme for an Orban-type populist, set against the backdrop of the broader disintegration of society caused by a surfeit of old people, a deficit of taxpayers, and the rotting away of an economy too rooted in property speculation to do anything productive.
Sunak calls Starmer another 'leftie lawyer' who voted against deportations of illegal immigrants at PMQs
Two cheeks, same arse.
Oh and Sunak has repeated Braverman's billions of asylum seeker lies.
He has just said at the dispatch box that 100 million is the UN estimate
It's nonsense. Check out Susannah this morning. This number includes the displaced people from the Turkish earthquake. It is displaced people throughout the world and not the number of people displaced who plan to arrive at Dover in a boat. You have been taken in. In fairness Sunak was careful not to add Braverman's later statement about them all wanting to come to the UK
Sunak and Braverman don’t believe a word of it either. They’re just electioneering. It’s almost all the Tory government do: government for them is one long referendum campaign.
That’s why last week’s deal on NI felt such an outlier. Seems a long time ago doesn’t it? Since then we’ve had Boristas working up into a lather about partygate again, and Suella channelling Farage.
Sunak appears to me to be rather uncomfortable. Cruella on the other hand is lapping up the attention.
The obvious sexism in the nickname really reveals who you are.
It isn't remotely sexist. I believe the lady to be fundamentally evil.
Suella De Vil Suella De Vil If she doesn't scare you No evil thing will…
Pretty nasty thing to say... of course your evil posturing is despicable.
Had a chat with a barrister with impeccably right wing credentials and no fan of illegal border crossings.
Says yesterday's legislation is simply the worst piece of drafted legislation he has ever seen.
Like it was focus grouped and then drafted.
He feels sorry for the GLD teams that will have to defend this shit in court.
There's a retroactive clause in the bill that must have been written by Lionel Hutz.
It isn't serious law. Braverman sends a letter to Tory MPs saying she doesn't know if the bill is legal but there is "a greater than 50% chance" it isn't.
Then we get Dishi in front of a Stop The Boats lectern. Speaking in his Jackanory voice. Quite literally telling stories to political toddlers.
They know the plan - laughable to even use that word - doesn't work practically. They know it doesn't work legally. But they also know their remaining voters don't care, they just want action. Though I don't think "blame the courts" works as an excuse any longer.
The third plan in three years and legislation so obviously designed for dividing lines rather than results is too obviously transparent to fool most voters. And making Braverman the face of it just compounds the problem. She is massively unpopular.
I really can’t see it ending well for Sunak. The people he is targeting are those most likely to buy the Farage/Reform betrayal narrative that will inevitably explode into the right-wing press this summer when the boats keep on coming.
Cooper was right yesterday: people want results, not performative gestures that won’t work.
In a serious question:
How *would* anyone stop the boats?
It doesn't seem to me, short of major military operations on the beaches of Northern France, which ain't happening, or arranging odd accidents for all the traffickers - and even that would presumably pause rather than eliminate the problem - that there's much to be done about it.
That doesn't mean we can't still point and laugh at the stupidity of this idea, but are there are any concrete suggestions? If so, let's hear them.
Stopping the boats, if that's your main aim, is pretty simple. A UK asylum centre in Calais and ferry tickets to Dover.
Stopping boats without letting people in another way? Can't help you there.
Is it that simple? Will the Albanians simply give up when rejected at Calais?
Quite possibly. But it reduces the numbers of boat people, which makes it easier to catch and return those who remain.
Part of our problem at the moment is that the rate of people coming in vastly exceeds our state ability to process them.
So the UK is reduced to bloodcurdling threats that it probably can't carry out. Partly human rights law, but partly because the UK state can't reliably carry out anything. Trust me- that tends not to work.
Pitiful
Making asylum easier to claim at Calais - then giving the lucky ones tickets for the Dover Ferry - will just INCREASE the pull factor of Calais
Tens of thousands more will try. What will those that fail then do? Will they think “shit, at least the UK gave me a fair go, oh well, now I’ll head back to Albania/Somalia”
Or will they simply try and cross illegally? As before, but in even greater numbers?
You don’t have an answer which doesn’t make you extremely uncomfortable. So you would rather provide no answer at all. It’s a kind of cowardice
If you provide safe routes, then there is far less argument legally about those who choose not to use them.
Where are we going to deport them? We are incapable of deporting anyone because liberal lawyers go mad and Gary lineker calls you goebbels and everyone is pathetically spineless
And if we did start actually deporting those that failed the Calais asylum test then they’d all go back to destroying their documents and using the dinghies
It’s just another pitifuf non answer. It is pathetic
Liberal lawyers going mad or staying sane does not change the law.
If you want the policy objectives that the govt is pushing with their policy you need to be angry with the govt for not leaving the refugee convention not liberal lawyers.
I have not read the proposed Bill or much of the news regarding it so can't comment specifically on the proposed Bill.
However Australia is in the Refugee Convention and has had a similar policy before. Which was ruled legal by its domestic Courts. And the policy has worked in its objectives.
If you disagree with the policy, then that should be a matter for political debate, not legal arguments. If Parliament passes a law saying this is legal, then that should be the law, just as it was elsewhere.
You dont need my opinion, the government does not think it legal!
Has the Government put a "notwithstanding" clause in?
If so, then its legal, is it not?
Get Betfair to put a market up and happy to accommodate backers of legal.
Parliament sets the law. If Parliament says something is legal, then it is legal.
Men marrying other men wasn't legal. Parliament changed the law, now it is. That is what Parliament is for.
Have you heard of international law?
Yes. Its a bad joke.
Parliament can override international law.
It can't override it, it can legislate to make it unenforceable in the UK. The UK then lives with the consequences of that because the international law still exists. In the case of the illegal immigration legislation, though, the government is saying it is not acting contrary to international law or seeking to make it unenforceable.
We live with the consequences then, if that is what we choose to do, that is a matter for politics not lawyers.
If Parliament passes a Bill overriding international law domestically, eg by legalising cannabis which I wholeheartedly support in violation of international law, then there are no international courts that can override the UK Parliament. Nor should there be.
Or the UN Declaration on Human Rights, that asserts the rights of all human beings to live in dignity regardless of ethnic origin, or the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Or the Geneva Conventions. Do you think the sovereign body in any sovereign country ought to be able to renege on any international law it wishes to, so long as it only does so domestically? So for example the Brazilian parliament could decide to exterminate the Yanomami people and they shouldn't be held responsible before an international court if they did?
Yes I 100% think any sovereign body ought to be able to renege on any international law it wishes to do so, domestically.
If the Brazilian Parliament chose to exterminate a people then that would be a matter for international relations to resolve, not lawyers or courts. Just as China's acts of genocide against the Rohingya and others.
A genuinely robust international legal system that punishes and deters such atrocities, regardless of who commits them and where they happen, is a challenging aspiration, but it's a bit odd to say it isn't a worthwhile one.
Its not a worthwhile one, because the meaning of atrocity changes. The problem is what's good today can be awful in the future, or vice-versa/
The law should be a living, breathing, and most importantly evolving body - which is what Parliament is for.
If you go back just ten years it was illegal for two men to marry each other in Scotland. If you go back ~fifty years it was illegal for two men to love each other and could result in imprisonment. If you go back hundreds of years, it could result in execution.
You operate as if international law is "good" so should be set in stone, but the law has never been that way. Ossifying laws in stone is how you end up with the madness that is the US Second Amendment and routine mass murder in schools. Ossifying laws in stone is how you end up with gays being stoned to death.
If an international law signed in the 50s put a prohibition on same sex marriage, then I think Parliament would be well within its rights to say that notwithstanding the law we are legalising it. If an international law signed in the 18th century had a Second Amendment style ruling then following Dunblane I'd think that Parliament is perfectly entitled to say that the law needs to change.
We should seek to tackle atrocities internationally, but that needs to be done via international relations, not laws locking in the views of the past to be enforced in the future.
A robust and dynamic international legal system then. One which moves with the times as all good legal systems should. To inter alia punish and deter atrocities. As I say, most odd to not at least grant this to be a worthwhile aspiration. Still, you're you. With your reverence for the Nation State.
It is not a reverence for the Nation State, it is a reverence for democracy. Democracy is attached to the Nation State.
Our legal system evolves with the times due to Parliament, and we have routine elections to Parliament.
If you want international law to evolve with the times and not be ossified to the past saying that cannabis must be illegal/gays must be stoned/second amendment etc then without a global Parliament how do you achieve that?
And if there is a global Parliament, then haven't you just globalised all the issues you decry with the Nation State?
If a local council in a deeply conservative part of the country wished to ban homosexuality in accordance with local demand we would say to them and their voters, "Nope, sorry, not on. There's a higher law against you doing that."
IOW some things are too important to be left to the voters. It's therefore not just about democracy. It's about where is the best place in an ideal world - since I did say 'aspiration' remember - for certain fundamental human rights to be protected.
Asserting this is always and forever the nation state, ie there can never be anything so important it can't be left to voters at this level of aggregation, is illogical. It comes from, as I say, revering the nation state itself. Which is what you do, what many people do tbf, odd as it might appear to me.
So if these things can't be left to voters....who gets to decide and where do they get their authority to decide for the rest of us?
People like you? Only if you want a lot of people picking up a gun. I wouldn't trust any small group of deciders so tough we decide as a demos or we have a dictatorship of the bien pensant and that will end in blood
Had a chat with a barrister with impeccably right wing credentials and no fan of illegal border crossings.
Says yesterday's legislation is simply the worst piece of drafted legislation he has ever seen.
Like it was focus grouped and then drafted.
He feels sorry for the GLD teams that will have to defend this shit in court.
There's a retroactive clause in the bill that must have been written by Lionel Hutz.
It isn't serious law. Braverman sends a letter to Tory MPs saying she doesn't know if the bill is legal but there is "a greater than 50% chance" it isn't.
Then we get Dishi in front of a Stop The Boats lectern. Speaking in his Jackanory voice. Quite literally telling stories to political toddlers.
They know the plan - laughable to even use that word - doesn't work practically. They know it doesn't work legally. But they also know their remaining voters don't care, they just want action. Though I don't think "blame the courts" works as an excuse any longer.
The third plan in three years and legislation so obviously designed for dividing lines rather than results is too obviously transparent to fool most voters. And making Braverman the face of it just compounds the problem. She is massively unpopular.
I really can’t see it ending well for Sunak. The people he is targeting are those most likely to buy the Farage/Reform betrayal narrative that will inevitably explode into the right-wing press this summer when the boats keep on coming.
Cooper was right yesterday: people want results, not performative gestures that won’t work.
In a serious question:
How *would* anyone stop the boats?
It doesn't seem to me, short of major military operations on the beaches of Northern France, which ain't happening, or arranging odd accidents for all the traffickers - and even that would presumably pause rather than eliminate the problem - that there's much to be done about it.
That doesn't mean we can't still point and laugh at the stupidity of this idea, but are there are any concrete suggestions? If so, let's hear them.
Stopping the boats, if that's your main aim, is pretty simple. A UK asylum centre in Calais and ferry tickets to Dover.
Stopping boats without letting people in another way? Can't help you there.
Is it that simple? Will the Albanians simply give up when rejected at Calais?
Quite possibly. But it reduces the numbers of boat people, which makes it easier to catch and return those who remain.
Part of our problem at the moment is that the rate of people coming in vastly exceeds our state ability to process them.
So the UK is reduced to bloodcurdling threats that it probably can't carry out. Partly human rights law, but partly because the UK state can't reliably carry out anything. Trust me- that tends not to work.
Pitiful
Making asylum easier to claim at Calais - then giving the lucky ones tickets for the Dover Ferry - will just INCREASE the pull factor of Calais
Tens of thousands more will try. What will those that fail then do? Will they think “shit, at least the UK gave me a fair go, oh well, now I’ll head back to Albania/Somalia”
Or will they simply try and cross illegally? As before, but in even greater numbers?
You don’t have an answer which doesn’t make you extremely uncomfortable. So you would rather provide no answer at all. It’s a kind of cowardice
If you provide safe routes, then there is far less argument legally about those who choose not to use them.
Where are we going to deport them? We are incapable of deporting anyone because liberal lawyers go mad and Gary lineker calls you goebbels and everyone is pathetically spineless
And if we did start actually deporting those that failed the Calais asylum test then they’d all go back to destroying their documents and using the dinghies
It’s just another pitifuf non answer. It is pathetic
Liberal lawyers going mad or staying sane does not change the law.
If you want the policy objectives that the govt is pushing with their policy you need to be angry with the govt for not leaving the refugee convention not liberal lawyers.
I have not read the proposed Bill or much of the news regarding it so can't comment specifically on the proposed Bill.
However Australia is in the Refugee Convention and has had a similar policy before. Which was ruled legal by its domestic Courts. And the policy has worked in its objectives.
If you disagree with the policy, then that should be a matter for political debate, not legal arguments. If Parliament passes a law saying this is legal, then that should be the law, just as it was elsewhere.
You dont need my opinion, the government does not think it legal!
Has the Government put a "notwithstanding" clause in?
If so, then its legal, is it not?
Get Betfair to put a market up and happy to accommodate backers of legal.
Parliament sets the law. If Parliament says something is legal, then it is legal.
Men marrying other men wasn't legal. Parliament changed the law, now it is. That is what Parliament is for.
Have you heard of international law?
Yes. Its a bad joke.
Parliament can override international law.
It can't override it, it can legislate to make it unenforceable in the UK. The UK then lives with the consequences of that because the international law still exists. In the case of the illegal immigration legislation, though, the government is saying it is not acting contrary to international law or seeking to make it unenforceable.
We live with the consequences then, if that is what we choose to do, that is a matter for politics not lawyers.
If Parliament passes a Bill overriding international law domestically, eg by legalising cannabis which I wholeheartedly support in violation of international law, then there are no international courts that can override the UK Parliament. Nor should there be.
Or the UN Declaration on Human Rights, that asserts the rights of all human beings to live in dignity regardless of ethnic origin, or the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Or the Geneva Conventions. Do you think the sovereign body in any sovereign country ought to be able to renege on any international law it wishes to, so long as it only does so domestically? So for example the Brazilian parliament could decide to exterminate the Yanomami people and they shouldn't be held responsible before an international court if they did?
Yes I 100% think any sovereign body ought to be able to renege on any international law it wishes to do so, domestically.
If the Brazilian Parliament chose to exterminate a people then that would be a matter for international relations to resolve, not lawyers or courts. Just as China's acts of genocide against the Rohingya and others.
A genuinely robust international legal system that punishes and deters such atrocities, regardless of who commits them and where they happen, is a challenging aspiration, but it's a bit odd to say it isn't a worthwhile one.
Its not a worthwhile one, because the meaning of atrocity changes. The problem is what's good today can be awful in the future, or vice-versa/
The law should be a living, breathing, and most importantly evolving body - which is what Parliament is for.
If you go back just ten years it was illegal for two men to marry each other in Scotland. If you go back ~fifty years it was illegal for two men to love each other and could result in imprisonment. If you go back hundreds of years, it could result in execution.
You operate as if international law is "good" so should be set in stone, but the law has never been that way. Ossifying laws in stone is how you end up with the madness that is the US Second Amendment and routine mass murder in schools. Ossifying laws in stone is how you end up with gays being stoned to death.
If an international law signed in the 50s put a prohibition on same sex marriage, then I think Parliament would be well within its rights to say that notwithstanding the law we are legalising it. If an international law signed in the 18th century had a Second Amendment style ruling then following Dunblane I'd think that Parliament is perfectly entitled to say that the law needs to change.
We should seek to tackle atrocities internationally, but that needs to be done via international relations, not laws locking in the views of the past to be enforced in the future.
A robust and dynamic international legal system then. One which moves with the times as all good legal systems should. To inter alia punish and deter atrocities. As I say, most odd to not at least grant this to be a worthwhile aspiration. Still, you're you. With your reverence for the Nation State.
It is not a reverence for the Nation State, it is a reverence for democracy. Democracy is attached to the Nation State.
Our legal system evolves with the times due to Parliament, and we have routine elections to Parliament.
If you want international law to evolve with the times and not be ossified to the past saying that cannabis must be illegal/gays must be stoned/second amendment etc then without a global Parliament how do you achieve that?
And if there is a global Parliament, then haven't you just globalised all the issues you decry with the Nation State?
If a local council in a deeply conservative part of the country wished to ban homosexuality in accordance with local demand we would say to them and their voters, "Nope, sorry, not on. There's a higher law against you doing that."
IOW some things are too important to be left to the voters. It's therefore not just about democracy. It's about where is the best place in an ideal world - since I did say 'aspiration' remember - for certain fundamental human rights to be protected.
Asserting this is always and forever the nation state, ie there can never be anything so important it can't be left to voters at this level of aggregation, is illogical. It comes from, as I say, revering the nation state itself. Which is what you do, what many people do tbf, odd as it might appear to me.
The trouble with that is eventually the voters will force a way for them to have their say.
If Labour think these plans are so appalling and the numbers so misleading, it is incumbent on them to release THEIR plan to stop the boats. And also the estimate of how many would come under their plan.
In spite of what SKS says in practise labour favour very liberal borders. Not quite open borders but not far off.
Mind you so did new labour and Cameron's Tories but they put nothing in place to support the additional people due to their dishonesty over the matter and not wanting to rock the property boat I'd guess
If Labour are throwing their toys out of the pram over this, they can give us an alternative. Not just guff about "safe and humane routes". Give us details and numbers.
100m due to arrive
Sunak can say he stopped 99m at GE2024
SKS will say he would have stopped 99.5m if he had been in power
Sunak will say Labour would have let in 100m
SKS will say no we wouldnt we have a plan/mission/pledge
And on and on and on
BULLLSSSHHHHIIIITTTT
What is bullshit is you claiming anyone has said 100m will arrive.
What does "there are 100m ... they are coming here"" mean
This
I don't think she's wrong.
If they could get here, they would. The only constraints are (a) personal endurance/resilience of the individuals (b) the market price of the people smuggler's passage and (c) the capacity of that industry to transport them.
Surely after the first billion or so had got to the UK it would become less attractive, and some of the remaining billions might prefer another destination, if it's not being a traitor to suggest such a thing!
Had a chat with a barrister with impeccably right wing credentials and no fan of illegal border crossings.
Says yesterday's legislation is simply the worst piece of drafted legislation he has ever seen.
Like it was focus grouped and then drafted.
He feels sorry for the GLD teams that will have to defend this shit in court.
There's a retroactive clause in the bill that must have been written by Lionel Hutz.
It isn't serious law. Braverman sends a letter to Tory MPs saying she doesn't know if the bill is legal but there is "a greater than 50% chance" it isn't.
Then we get Dishi in front of a Stop The Boats lectern. Speaking in his Jackanory voice. Quite literally telling stories to political toddlers.
They know the plan - laughable to even use that word - doesn't work practically. They know it doesn't work legally. But they also know their remaining voters don't care, they just want action. Though I don't think "blame the courts" works as an excuse any longer.
The third plan in three years and legislation so obviously designed for dividing lines rather than results is too obviously transparent to fool most voters. And making Braverman the face of it just compounds the problem. She is massively unpopular.
I really can’t see it ending well for Sunak. The people he is targeting are those most likely to buy the Farage/Reform betrayal narrative that will inevitably explode into the right-wing press this summer when the boats keep on coming.
Cooper was right yesterday: people want results, not performative gestures that won’t work.
In a serious question:
How *would* anyone stop the boats?
It doesn't seem to me, short of major military operations on the beaches of Northern France, which ain't happening, or arranging odd accidents for all the traffickers - and even that would presumably pause rather than eliminate the problem - that there's much to be done about it.
That doesn't mean we can't still point and laugh at the stupidity of this idea, but are there are any concrete suggestions? If so, let's hear them.
Stopping the boats, if that's your main aim, is pretty simple. A UK asylum centre in Calais and ferry tickets to Dover.
Stopping boats without letting people in another way? Can't help you there.
Is it that simple? Will the Albanians simply give up when rejected at Calais?
Quite possibly. But it reduces the numbers of boat people, which makes it easier to catch and return those who remain.
Part of our problem at the moment is that the rate of people coming in vastly exceeds our state ability to process them.
So the UK is reduced to bloodcurdling threats that it probably can't carry out. Partly human rights law, but partly because the UK state can't reliably carry out anything. Trust me- that tends not to work.
Pitiful
Making asylum easier to claim at Calais - then giving the lucky ones tickets for the Dover Ferry - will just INCREASE the pull factor of Calais
Tens of thousands more will try. What will those that fail then do? Will they think “shit, at least the UK gave me a fair go, oh well, now I’ll head back to Albania/Somalia”
Or will they simply try and cross illegally? As before, but in even greater numbers?
You don’t have an answer which doesn’t make you extremely uncomfortable. So you would rather provide no answer at all. It’s a kind of cowardice
If you provide safe routes, then there is far less argument legally about those who choose not to use them.
Where are we going to deport them? We are incapable of deporting anyone because liberal lawyers go mad and Gary lineker calls you goebbels and everyone is pathetically spineless
And if we did start actually deporting those that failed the Calais asylum test then they’d all go back to destroying their documents and using the dinghies
It’s just another pitifuf non answer. It is pathetic
Liberal lawyers going mad or staying sane does not change the law.
If you want the policy objectives that the govt is pushing with their policy you need to be angry with the govt for not leaving the refugee convention not liberal lawyers.
I have not read the proposed Bill or much of the news regarding it so can't comment specifically on the proposed Bill.
However Australia is in the Refugee Convention and has had a similar policy before. Which was ruled legal by its domestic Courts. And the policy has worked in its objectives.
If you disagree with the policy, then that should be a matter for political debate, not legal arguments. If Parliament passes a law saying this is legal, then that should be the law, just as it was elsewhere.
You dont need my opinion, the government does not think it legal!
Has the Government put a "notwithstanding" clause in?
If so, then its legal, is it not?
Get Betfair to put a market up and happy to accommodate backers of legal.
Parliament sets the law. If Parliament says something is legal, then it is legal.
Men marrying other men wasn't legal. Parliament changed the law, now it is. That is what Parliament is for.
Have you heard of international law?
Yes. Its a bad joke.
Parliament can override international law.
It can't override it, it can legislate to make it unenforceable in the UK. The UK then lives with the consequences of that because the international law still exists. In the case of the illegal immigration legislation, though, the government is saying it is not acting contrary to international law or seeking to make it unenforceable.
We live with the consequences then, if that is what we choose to do, that is a matter for politics not lawyers.
If Parliament passes a Bill overriding international law domestically, eg by legalising cannabis which I wholeheartedly support in violation of international law, then there are no international courts that can override the UK Parliament. Nor should there be.
Or the UN Declaration on Human Rights, that asserts the rights of all human beings to live in dignity regardless of ethnic origin, or the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Or the Geneva Conventions. Do you think the sovereign body in any sovereign country ought to be able to renege on any international law it wishes to, so long as it only does so domestically? So for example the Brazilian parliament could decide to exterminate the Yanomami people and they shouldn't be held responsible before an international court if they did?
Yes I 100% think any sovereign body ought to be able to renege on any international law it wishes to do so, domestically.
If the Brazilian Parliament chose to exterminate a people then that would be a matter for international relations to resolve, not lawyers or courts. Just as China's acts of genocide against the Rohingya and others.
A genuinely robust international legal system that punishes and deters such atrocities, regardless of who commits them and where they happen, is a challenging aspiration, but it's a bit odd to say it isn't a worthwhile one.
Its not a worthwhile one, because the meaning of atrocity changes. The problem is what's good today can be awful in the future, or vice-versa/
The law should be a living, breathing, and most importantly evolving body - which is what Parliament is for.
If you go back just ten years it was illegal for two men to marry each other in Scotland. If you go back ~fifty years it was illegal for two men to love each other and could result in imprisonment. If you go back hundreds of years, it could result in execution.
You operate as if international law is "good" so should be set in stone, but the law has never been that way. Ossifying laws in stone is how you end up with the madness that is the US Second Amendment and routine mass murder in schools. Ossifying laws in stone is how you end up with gays being stoned to death.
If an international law signed in the 50s put a prohibition on same sex marriage, then I think Parliament would be well within its rights to say that notwithstanding the law we are legalising it. If an international law signed in the 18th century had a Second Amendment style ruling then following Dunblane I'd think that Parliament is perfectly entitled to say that the law needs to change.
We should seek to tackle atrocities internationally, but that needs to be done via international relations, not laws locking in the views of the past to be enforced in the future.
A robust and dynamic international legal system then. One which moves with the times as all good legal systems should. To inter alia punish and deter atrocities. As I say, most odd to not at least grant this to be a worthwhile aspiration. Still, you're you. With your reverence for the Nation State.
It is not a reverence for the Nation State, it is a reverence for democracy. Democracy is attached to the Nation State.
Our legal system evolves with the times due to Parliament, and we have routine elections to Parliament.
If you want international law to evolve with the times and not be ossified to the past saying that cannabis must be illegal/gays must be stoned/second amendment etc then without a global Parliament how do you achieve that?
And if there is a global Parliament, then haven't you just globalised all the issues you decry with the Nation State?
If a local council in a deeply conservative part of the country wished to ban homosexuality in accordance with local demand we would say to them and their voters, "Nope, sorry, not on. There's a higher law against you doing that."
IOW some things are too important to be left to the voters. It's therefore not just about democracy. It's about where is the best place in an ideal world - since I did say 'aspiration' remember - for certain fundamental human rights to be protected.
Asserting this is always and forever the nation state, ie there can never be anything so important it can't be left to voters at this level of aggregation, is illogical. It comes from, as I say, revering the nation state itself. Which is what you do, what many people do tbf, odd as it might appear to me.
So if these things can't be left to voters....who gets to decide and where do they get their authority to decide for the rest of us?
People like you? Only if you want a lot of people picking up a gun. I wouldn't trust any small group of deciders so tough we decide as a demos or we have a dictatorship of the bien pensant and that will end in blood
Nice. Bigotry backed up by the blatant threat of violence. Legalise queerbashing or the people will arm themselves?
Let’s be honest, the small boats issue is a complicated and nuanced issue and most of our politicians and news media don’t deal in complexity and nuance.
The solution is an integrated approach - more money to deal with the asylum backlog, a more accessible and responsive asylum process, closer co-operation with Europe (ho-hum) and yes disincentivising the concept of trying to enter the country illegally.
Unfortunately because we are so polarised and because of the lack of complexity and nuance speaking about any one of these things in depth immediately marks you out as either a lefty loony liberal or a raving nazi. I don’t have much faith in Starmer to reset this situation but I have more than the chancers in government.
Spot on.
This is a classic Silver Bullet Fallacy issue, when the answer is to have multiple overlapping policies:
- dramatically faster processing of asylum applications: the Netherlands manages the vast majority of theirs in three months, and that means you don't have lots of people *seeking* asylum hanging around - offshore processing centers - a proper clampdown on those who employ (or profit from) illegal immigrants. - cooperation with the French to discourage small boats. It is also worth remembering that the UK had 50% more asylum seekers arriving back in 2002 (close to 100,000) - so while the boats may have made it slightly easier, there are many ways and means for people to enter the UK and to claim asylum. The boats just make it much more visible.
Are the people arrivng on boats intending to claim asylum - or is that their Plan B if they get caught, rather than arrivng on the beach and disappearing into the black economy?
That is Plan B: they'd much rather disappear into the illegal economy.
But remember those Albanians, it's trivial for them to get into the country. They were staffing those car washes five years ago, before there were any significant number of boat arrivals.
A UK tourist visa costs virtually nothing. You get a Megabus and you tell the nice immigration officer that you're coming to the UK for your cousin's wedding, and no way are you planning on working.
Sunak calls Starmer another 'leftie lawyer' who voted against deportations of illegal immigrants at PMQs
Two cheeks, same arse.
Oh and Sunak has repeated Braverman's billions of asylum seeker lies.
He has just said at the dispatch box that 100 million is the UN estimate
It's nonsense. Check out Susannah this morning. This number includes the displaced people from the Turkish earthquake. It is displaced people throughout the world and not the number of people displaced who plan to arrive at Dover in a boat. You have been taken in. In fairness Sunak was careful not to add Braverman's later statement about them all wanting to come to the UK
Sunak and Braverman don’t believe a word of it either. They’re just electioneering. It’s almost all the Tory government do: government for them is one long referendum campaign.
That’s why last week’s deal on NI felt such an outlier. Seems a long time ago doesn’t it? Since then we’ve had Boristas working up into a lather about partygate again, and Suella channelling Farage.
Sunak appears to me to be rather uncomfortable. Cruella on the other hand is lapping up the attention.
The obvious sexism in the nickname really reveals who you are.
It isn't remotely sexist. I believe the lady to be fundamentally evil.
Suella De Vil Suella De Vil If she doesn't scare you No evil thing will…
Pretty nasty thing to say... of course your evil posturing is despicable.
Was it nasty to sing about Adolf having one testicle?
Had a chat with a barrister with impeccably right wing credentials and no fan of illegal border crossings.
Says yesterday's legislation is simply the worst piece of drafted legislation he has ever seen.
Like it was focus grouped and then drafted.
He feels sorry for the GLD teams that will have to defend this shit in court.
There's a retroactive clause in the bill that must have been written by Lionel Hutz.
It isn't serious law. Braverman sends a letter to Tory MPs saying she doesn't know if the bill is legal but there is "a greater than 50% chance" it isn't.
Then we get Dishi in front of a Stop The Boats lectern. Speaking in his Jackanory voice. Quite literally telling stories to political toddlers.
They know the plan - laughable to even use that word - doesn't work practically. They know it doesn't work legally. But they also know their remaining voters don't care, they just want action. Though I don't think "blame the courts" works as an excuse any longer.
The third plan in three years and legislation so obviously designed for dividing lines rather than results is too obviously transparent to fool most voters. And making Braverman the face of it just compounds the problem. She is massively unpopular.
I really can’t see it ending well for Sunak. The people he is targeting are those most likely to buy the Farage/Reform betrayal narrative that will inevitably explode into the right-wing press this summer when the boats keep on coming.
Cooper was right yesterday: people want results, not performative gestures that won’t work.
In a serious question:
How *would* anyone stop the boats?
It doesn't seem to me, short of major military operations on the beaches of Northern France, which ain't happening, or arranging odd accidents for all the traffickers - and even that would presumably pause rather than eliminate the problem - that there's much to be done about it.
That doesn't mean we can't still point and laugh at the stupidity of this idea, but are there are any concrete suggestions? If so, let's hear them.
Stopping the boats, if that's your main aim, is pretty simple. A UK asylum centre in Calais and ferry tickets to Dover.
Stopping boats without letting people in another way? Can't help you there.
Is it that simple? Will the Albanians simply give up when rejected at Calais?
Quite possibly. But it reduces the numbers of boat people, which makes it easier to catch and return those who remain.
Part of our problem at the moment is that the rate of people coming in vastly exceeds our state ability to process them.
So the UK is reduced to bloodcurdling threats that it probably can't carry out. Partly human rights law, but partly because the UK state can't reliably carry out anything. Trust me- that tends not to work.
Pitiful
Making asylum easier to claim at Calais - then giving the lucky ones tickets for the Dover Ferry - will just INCREASE the pull factor of Calais
Tens of thousands more will try. What will those that fail then do? Will they think “shit, at least the UK gave me a fair go, oh well, now I’ll head back to Albania/Somalia”
Or will they simply try and cross illegally? As before, but in even greater numbers?
You don’t have an answer which doesn’t make you extremely uncomfortable. So you would rather provide no answer at all. It’s a kind of cowardice
If you provide safe routes, then there is far less argument legally about those who choose not to use them.
Where are we going to deport them? We are incapable of deporting anyone because liberal lawyers go mad and Gary lineker calls you goebbels and everyone is pathetically spineless
And if we did start actually deporting those that failed the Calais asylum test then they’d all go back to destroying their documents and using the dinghies
It’s just another pitifuf non answer. It is pathetic
Liberal lawyers going mad or staying sane does not change the law.
If you want the policy objectives that the govt is pushing with their policy you need to be angry with the govt for not leaving the refugee convention not liberal lawyers.
I have not read the proposed Bill or much of the news regarding it so can't comment specifically on the proposed Bill.
However Australia is in the Refugee Convention and has had a similar policy before. Which was ruled legal by its domestic Courts. And the policy has worked in its objectives.
If you disagree with the policy, then that should be a matter for political debate, not legal arguments. If Parliament passes a law saying this is legal, then that should be the law, just as it was elsewhere.
You dont need my opinion, the government does not think it legal!
Has the Government put a "notwithstanding" clause in?
If so, then its legal, is it not?
Get Betfair to put a market up and happy to accommodate backers of legal.
Parliament sets the law. If Parliament says something is legal, then it is legal.
Men marrying other men wasn't legal. Parliament changed the law, now it is. That is what Parliament is for.
Have you heard of international law?
Yes. Its a bad joke.
Parliament can override international law.
It can't override it, it can legislate to make it unenforceable in the UK. The UK then lives with the consequences of that because the international law still exists. In the case of the illegal immigration legislation, though, the government is saying it is not acting contrary to international law or seeking to make it unenforceable.
We live with the consequences then, if that is what we choose to do, that is a matter for politics not lawyers.
If Parliament passes a Bill overriding international law domestically, eg by legalising cannabis which I wholeheartedly support in violation of international law, then there are no international courts that can override the UK Parliament. Nor should there be.
Or the UN Declaration on Human Rights, that asserts the rights of all human beings to live in dignity regardless of ethnic origin, or the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Or the Geneva Conventions. Do you think the sovereign body in any sovereign country ought to be able to renege on any international law it wishes to, so long as it only does so domestically? So for example the Brazilian parliament could decide to exterminate the Yanomami people and they shouldn't be held responsible before an international court if they did?
Yes I 100% think any sovereign body ought to be able to renege on any international law it wishes to do so, domestically.
If the Brazilian Parliament chose to exterminate a people then that would be a matter for international relations to resolve, not lawyers or courts. Just as China's acts of genocide against the Rohingya and others.
A genuinely robust international legal system that punishes and deters such atrocities, regardless of who commits them and where they happen, is a challenging aspiration, but it's a bit odd to say it isn't a worthwhile one.
Its not a worthwhile one, because the meaning of atrocity changes. The problem is what's good today can be awful in the future, or vice-versa/
The law should be a living, breathing, and most importantly evolving body - which is what Parliament is for.
If you go back just ten years it was illegal for two men to marry each other in Scotland. If you go back ~fifty years it was illegal for two men to love each other and could result in imprisonment. If you go back hundreds of years, it could result in execution.
You operate as if international law is "good" so should be set in stone, but the law has never been that way. Ossifying laws in stone is how you end up with the madness that is the US Second Amendment and routine mass murder in schools. Ossifying laws in stone is how you end up with gays being stoned to death.
If an international law signed in the 50s put a prohibition on same sex marriage, then I think Parliament would be well within its rights to say that notwithstanding the law we are legalising it. If an international law signed in the 18th century had a Second Amendment style ruling then following Dunblane I'd think that Parliament is perfectly entitled to say that the law needs to change.
We should seek to tackle atrocities internationally, but that needs to be done via international relations, not laws locking in the views of the past to be enforced in the future.
A robust and dynamic international legal system then. One which moves with the times as all good legal systems should. To inter alia punish and deter atrocities. As I say, most odd to not at least grant this to be a worthwhile aspiration. Still, you're you. With your reverence for the Nation State.
It is not a reverence for the Nation State, it is a reverence for democracy. Democracy is attached to the Nation State.
Our legal system evolves with the times due to Parliament, and we have routine elections to Parliament.
If you want international law to evolve with the times and not be ossified to the past saying that cannabis must be illegal/gays must be stoned/second amendment etc then without a global Parliament how do you achieve that?
And if there is a global Parliament, then haven't you just globalised all the issues you decry with the Nation State?
If a local council in a deeply conservative part of the country wished to ban homosexuality in accordance with local demand we would say to them and their voters, "Nope, sorry, not on. There's a higher law against you doing that."
IOW some things are too important to be left to the voters. It's therefore not just about democracy. It's about where is the best place in an ideal world - since I did say 'aspiration' remember - for certain fundamental human rights to be protected.
Asserting this is always and forever the nation state, ie there can never be anything so important it can't be left to voters at this level of aggregation, is illogical. It comes from, as I say, revering the nation state itself. Which is what you do, what many people do tbf, odd as it might appear to me.
So if these things can't be left to voters....who gets to decide and where do they get their authority to decide for the rest of us?
People like you? Only if you want a lot of people picking up a gun. I wouldn't trust any small group of deciders so tough we decide as a demos or we have a dictatorship of the bien pensant and that will end in blood
Nice. Bigotry backed up by the blatant threat of violence. Legalise queerbashing or the people will arm themselves?
Where did I say legalise queer bashing...clue I didn't . I commented on "somethings are too important to be left to voters" , looking for a bigotted comment that is one
Had a chat with a barrister with impeccably right wing credentials and no fan of illegal border crossings.
Says yesterday's legislation is simply the worst piece of drafted legislation he has ever seen.
Like it was focus grouped and then drafted.
He feels sorry for the GLD teams that will have to defend this shit in court.
There's a retroactive clause in the bill that must have been written by Lionel Hutz.
It isn't serious law. Braverman sends a letter to Tory MPs saying she doesn't know if the bill is legal but there is "a greater than 50% chance" it isn't.
Then we get Dishi in front of a Stop The Boats lectern. Speaking in his Jackanory voice. Quite literally telling stories to political toddlers.
They know the plan - laughable to even use that word - doesn't work practically. They know it doesn't work legally. But they also know their remaining voters don't care, they just want action. Though I don't think "blame the courts" works as an excuse any longer.
The third plan in three years and legislation so obviously designed for dividing lines rather than results is too obviously transparent to fool most voters. And making Braverman the face of it just compounds the problem. She is massively unpopular.
I really can’t see it ending well for Sunak. The people he is targeting are those most likely to buy the Farage/Reform betrayal narrative that will inevitably explode into the right-wing press this summer when the boats keep on coming.
Cooper was right yesterday: people want results, not performative gestures that won’t work.
In a serious question:
How *would* anyone stop the boats?
It doesn't seem to me, short of major military operations on the beaches of Northern France, which ain't happening, or arranging odd accidents for all the traffickers - and even that would presumably pause rather than eliminate the problem - that there's much to be done about it.
That doesn't mean we can't still point and laugh at the stupidity of this idea, but are there are any concrete suggestions? If so, let's hear them.
Stopping the boats, if that's your main aim, is pretty simple. A UK asylum centre in Calais and ferry tickets to Dover.
Stopping boats without letting people in another way? Can't help you there.
Is it that simple? Will the Albanians simply give up when rejected at Calais?
Quite possibly. But it reduces the numbers of boat people, which makes it easier to catch and return those who remain.
Part of our problem at the moment is that the rate of people coming in vastly exceeds our state ability to process them.
So the UK is reduced to bloodcurdling threats that it probably can't carry out. Partly human rights law, but partly because the UK state can't reliably carry out anything. Trust me- that tends not to work.
Pitiful
Making asylum easier to claim at Calais - then giving the lucky ones tickets for the Dover Ferry - will just INCREASE the pull factor of Calais
Tens of thousands more will try. What will those that fail then do? Will they think “shit, at least the UK gave me a fair go, oh well, now I’ll head back to Albania/Somalia”
Or will they simply try and cross illegally? As before, but in even greater numbers?
You don’t have an answer which doesn’t make you extremely uncomfortable. So you would rather provide no answer at all. It’s a kind of cowardice
If you provide safe routes, then there is far less argument legally about those who choose not to use them.
Where are we going to deport them? We are incapable of deporting anyone because liberal lawyers go mad and Gary lineker calls you goebbels and everyone is pathetically spineless
And if we did start actually deporting those that failed the Calais asylum test then they’d all go back to destroying their documents and using the dinghies
It’s just another pitifuf non answer. It is pathetic
Liberal lawyers going mad or staying sane does not change the law.
If you want the policy objectives that the govt is pushing with their policy you need to be angry with the govt for not leaving the refugee convention not liberal lawyers.
I have not read the proposed Bill or much of the news regarding it so can't comment specifically on the proposed Bill.
However Australia is in the Refugee Convention and has had a similar policy before. Which was ruled legal by its domestic Courts. And the policy has worked in its objectives.
If you disagree with the policy, then that should be a matter for political debate, not legal arguments. If Parliament passes a law saying this is legal, then that should be the law, just as it was elsewhere.
You dont need my opinion, the government does not think it legal!
Has the Government put a "notwithstanding" clause in?
If so, then its legal, is it not?
Get Betfair to put a market up and happy to accommodate backers of legal.
Parliament sets the law. If Parliament says something is legal, then it is legal.
Men marrying other men wasn't legal. Parliament changed the law, now it is. That is what Parliament is for.
Have you heard of international law?
Yes. Its a bad joke.
Parliament can override international law.
It can't override it, it can legislate to make it unenforceable in the UK. The UK then lives with the consequences of that because the international law still exists. In the case of the illegal immigration legislation, though, the government is saying it is not acting contrary to international law or seeking to make it unenforceable.
We live with the consequences then, if that is what we choose to do, that is a matter for politics not lawyers.
If Parliament passes a Bill overriding international law domestically, eg by legalising cannabis which I wholeheartedly support in violation of international law, then there are no international courts that can override the UK Parliament. Nor should there be.
Or the UN Declaration on Human Rights, that asserts the rights of all human beings to live in dignity regardless of ethnic origin, or the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Or the Geneva Conventions. Do you think the sovereign body in any sovereign country ought to be able to renege on any international law it wishes to, so long as it only does so domestically? So for example the Brazilian parliament could decide to exterminate the Yanomami people and they shouldn't be held responsible before an international court if they did?
Yes I 100% think any sovereign body ought to be able to renege on any international law it wishes to do so, domestically.
If the Brazilian Parliament chose to exterminate a people then that would be a matter for international relations to resolve, not lawyers or courts. Just as China's acts of genocide against the Rohingya and others.
A genuinely robust international legal system that punishes and deters such atrocities, regardless of who commits them and where they happen, is a challenging aspiration, but it's a bit odd to say it isn't a worthwhile one.
Its not a worthwhile one, because the meaning of atrocity changes. The problem is what's good today can be awful in the future, or vice-versa/
The law should be a living, breathing, and most importantly evolving body - which is what Parliament is for.
If you go back just ten years it was illegal for two men to marry each other in Scotland. If you go back ~fifty years it was illegal for two men to love each other and could result in imprisonment. If you go back hundreds of years, it could result in execution.
You operate as if international law is "good" so should be set in stone, but the law has never been that way. Ossifying laws in stone is how you end up with the madness that is the US Second Amendment and routine mass murder in schools. Ossifying laws in stone is how you end up with gays being stoned to death.
If an international law signed in the 50s put a prohibition on same sex marriage, then I think Parliament would be well within its rights to say that notwithstanding the law we are legalising it. If an international law signed in the 18th century had a Second Amendment style ruling then following Dunblane I'd think that Parliament is perfectly entitled to say that the law needs to change.
We should seek to tackle atrocities internationally, but that needs to be done via international relations, not laws locking in the views of the past to be enforced in the future.
A robust and dynamic international legal system then. One which moves with the times as all good legal systems should. To inter alia punish and deter atrocities. As I say, most odd to not at least grant this to be a worthwhile aspiration. Still, you're you. With your reverence for the Nation State.
It is not a reverence for the Nation State, it is a reverence for democracy. Democracy is attached to the Nation State.
Our legal system evolves with the times due to Parliament, and we have routine elections to Parliament.
If you want international law to evolve with the times and not be ossified to the past saying that cannabis must be illegal/gays must be stoned/second amendment etc then without a global Parliament how do you achieve that?
And if there is a global Parliament, then haven't you just globalised all the issues you decry with the Nation State?
If a local council in a deeply conservative part of the country wished to ban homosexuality in accordance with local demand we would say to them and their voters, "Nope, sorry, not on. There's a higher law against you doing that."
IOW some things are too important to be left to the voters. It's therefore not just about democracy. It's about where is the best place in an ideal world - since I did say 'aspiration' remember - for certain fundamental human rights to be protected.
Asserting this is always and forever the nation state, ie there can never be anything so important it can't be left to voters at this level of aggregation, is illogical. It comes from, as I say, revering the nation state itself. Which is what you do, what many people do tbf, odd as it might appear to me.
A local Council is not a country, so can not deprive people of national rights. That is the nation protecting them, yes.
If a country wants to ban homosexuality it can. I would absolutely deplore that, I would be against that, I would be disgusted - but it would be able to do so and many do.
The way to prevent that is to have educated voters who would vote out any Government so repellent, not rely upon flawed and failed international institutions to do so.
Nothing is too important to be left to the voters. Only the voters protect our rights.
Sunak calls Starmer another 'leftie lawyer' who voted against deportations of illegal immigrants at PMQs
Two cheeks, same arse.
Oh and Sunak has repeated Braverman's billions of asylum seeker lies.
He has just said at the dispatch box that 100 million is the UN estimate
It's nonsense. Check out Susannah this morning. This number includes the displaced people from the Turkish earthquake. It is displaced people throughout the world and not the number of people displaced who plan to arrive at Dover in a boat. You have been taken in. In fairness Sunak was careful not to add Braverman's later statement about them all wanting to come to the UK
Sunak and Braverman don’t believe a word of it either. They’re just electioneering. It’s almost all the Tory government do: government for them is one long referendum campaign.
That’s why last week’s deal on NI felt such an outlier. Seems a long time ago doesn’t it? Since then we’ve had Boristas working up into a lather about partygate again, and Suella channelling Farage.
Sunak appears to me to be rather uncomfortable. Cruella on the other hand is lapping up the attention.
The obvious sexism in the nickname really reveals who you are.
It isn't remotely sexist. I believe the lady to be fundamentally evil.
Suella De Vil Suella De Vil If she doesn't scare you No evil thing will…
Pretty nasty thing to say... of course your evil posturing is despicable.
"I dream of sending asylum seekers to Rwanda".
I have not criticised her gender or her race, my concern is her morality and her attitude. Attacks on Civil Servants, lefty Lawyers and the Labour Party, when she realises there might be violent repercussions is to say the least not nice. A Home Secretary who advocates that violent demonstrators who set fire to police cars outside asylum hostels should carry on regardless, is not expected from a HS.
Sunak has joined in, painting Starmer as a "lefty lawyer", which is worrying.
There are more very scary people on PB than I had realised. You're welcome.
Let’s be honest, the small boats issue is a complicated and nuanced issue and most of our politicians and news media don’t deal in complexity and nuance.
The solution is an integrated approach - more money to deal with the asylum backlog, a more accessible and responsive asylum process, closer co-operation with Europe (ho-hum) and yes disincentivising the concept of trying to enter the country illegally.
Unfortunately because we are so polarised and because of the lack of complexity and nuance speaking about any one of these things in depth immediately marks you out as either a lefty loony liberal or a raving nazi. I don’t have much faith in Starmer to reset this situation but I have more than the chancers in government.
Spot on.
This is a classic Silver Bullet Fallacy issue, when the answer is to have multiple overlapping policies:
- dramatically faster processing of asylum applications: the Netherlands manages the vast majority of theirs in three months, and that means you don't have lots of people *seeking* asylum hanging around - offshore processing centers - a proper clampdown on those who employ (or profit from) illegal immigrants. - cooperation with the French to discourage small boats.
It is also worth remembering that the UK had 50% more asylum seekers arriving back in 2002 (close to 100,000) - so while the boats may have made it slightly easier, there are many ways and means for people to enter the UK and to claim asylum. The boats just make it much more visible.
Why does the government not try any of these sensible options?
If Labour think these plans are so appalling and the numbers so misleading, it is incumbent on them to release THEIR plan to stop the boats. And also the estimate of how many would come under their plan.
In spite of what SKS says in practise labour favour very liberal borders. Not quite open borders but not far off.
Mind you so did new labour and Cameron's Tories but they put nothing in place to support the additional people due to their dishonesty over the matter and not wanting to rock the property boat I'd guess
If Labour are throwing their toys out of the pram over this, they can give us an alternative. Not just guff about "safe and humane routes". Give us details and numbers.
100m due to arrive
Sunak can say he stopped 99m at GE2024
SKS will say he would have stopped 99.5m if he had been in power
Sunak will say Labour would have let in 100m
SKS will say no we wouldnt we have a plan/mission/pledge
And on and on and on
BULLLSSSHHHHIIIITTTT
What is bullshit is you claiming anyone has said 100m will arrive.
What does "there are 100m ... they are coming here"" mean
This
"TSE is just another LEFTY LAWYER standing in our way!"
I'm not a fan of plenty of lefty lawyers and using courts as politics by other means, but when the government moans so hard about people dating to stand in their way I immediately sympathise more with them.
If Labour think these plans are so appalling and the numbers so misleading, it is incumbent on them to release THEIR plan to stop the boats. And also the estimate of how many would come under their plan.
In spite of what SKS says in practise labour favour very liberal borders. Not quite open borders but not far off.
Mind you so did new labour and Cameron's Tories but they put nothing in place to support the additional people due to their dishonesty over the matter and not wanting to rock the property boat I'd guess
If Labour are throwing their toys out of the pram over this, they can give us an alternative. Not just guff about "safe and humane routes". Give us details and numbers.
100m due to arrive
Sunak can say he stopped 99m at GE2024
SKS will say he would have stopped 99.5m if he had been in power
Sunak will say Labour would have let in 100m
SKS will say no we wouldnt we have a plan/mission/pledge
And on and on and on
BULLLSSSHHHHIIIITTTT
What is bullshit is you claiming anyone has said 100m will arrive.
What does "there are 100m ... they are coming here"" mean
This
"TSE is just another LEFTY LAWYER standing in our way!"
I am much a lefty lawyer as Margaret Thatcher.
In Suella Braverman's Conservative Party, Margaret Thatcher would be seen as a hand-wringing lefty lawyer too.
Recently I was called a banker (sic).
That really hurt more than being called the p word.
Just because I've worked in banking and financial services for nearly 12 years doesn't make me a banker.
I had a conversation this morning with a Member of the Public, who thought that we should be able to do what we liked to asylum seekers who were Breaking the Law in coming here.
When I pointed out that even the Home Secretary seems to be acknowledging that might itself involve Breaking the Law, I was told we should be able to do it anyway, because Something Needed Doing.
I conclude there are some people who think it's fine to break the law, and even use law-breaking on other people's part to justify that. Depressing. But the silver lining is that the person I spoke to Doesn't Vote.
If Labour think these plans are so appalling and the numbers so misleading, it is incumbent on them to release THEIR plan to stop the boats. And also the estimate of how many would come under their plan.
In spite of what SKS says in practise labour favour very liberal borders. Not quite open borders but not far off.
Mind you so did new labour and Cameron's Tories but they put nothing in place to support the additional people due to their dishonesty over the matter and not wanting to rock the property boat I'd guess
If Labour are throwing their toys out of the pram over this, they can give us an alternative. Not just guff about "safe and humane routes". Give us details and numbers.
100m due to arrive
Sunak can say he stopped 99m at GE2024
SKS will say he would have stopped 99.5m if he had been in power
Sunak will say Labour would have let in 100m
SKS will say no we wouldnt we have a plan/mission/pledge
And on and on and on
BULLLSSSHHHHIIIITTTT
What is bullshit is you claiming anyone has said 100m will arrive.
What does "there are 100m ... they are coming here"" mean
This
"TSE is just another LEFTY LAWYER standing in our way!"
I am much a lefty lawyer as Margaret Thatcher.
In Suella Braverman's Conservative Party, Margaret Thatcher would be seen as a hand-wringing lefty lawyer too.
Recently I was called a banker (sic).
That really hurt more than being called the p word.
Just because I've worked in banking and financial services for nearly 12 years doesn't make me a banker.
Let’s be honest, the small boats issue is a complicated and nuanced issue and most of our politicians and news media don’t deal in complexity and nuance.
The solution is an integrated approach - more money to deal with the asylum backlog, a more accessible and responsive asylum process, closer co-operation with Europe (ho-hum) and yes disincentivising the concept of trying to enter the country illegally.
Unfortunately because we are so polarised and because of the lack of complexity and nuance speaking about any one of these things in depth immediately marks you out as either a lefty loony liberal or a raving nazi. I don’t have much faith in Starmer to reset this situation but I have more than the chancers in government.
Spot on.
This is a classic Silver Bullet Fallacy issue, when the answer is to have multiple overlapping policies:
- dramatically faster processing of asylum applications: the Netherlands manages the vast majority of theirs in three months, and that means you don't have lots of people *seeking* asylum hanging around - offshore processing centers - a proper clampdown on those who employ (or profit from) illegal immigrants. - cooperation with the French to discourage small boats.
It is also worth remembering that the UK had 50% more asylum seekers arriving back in 2002 (close to 100,000) - so while the boats may have made it slightly easier, there are many ways and means for people to enter the UK and to claim asylum. The boats just make it much more visible.
Why does the government not try any of these sensible options?
We paid the french for their cooperation while we were in the EU, the numbers getting here illegally were about the same as when we paid the french for cooperation as they are now, a reasonable person might suspect that french cooperation amounted to them cooperating with taking money while doing nothing
Had a chat with a barrister with impeccably right wing credentials and no fan of illegal border crossings.
Says yesterday's legislation is simply the worst piece of drafted legislation he has ever seen.
Like it was focus grouped and then drafted.
He feels sorry for the GLD teams that will have to defend this shit in court.
There's a retroactive clause in the bill that must have been written by Lionel Hutz.
It isn't serious law. Braverman sends a letter to Tory MPs saying she doesn't know if the bill is legal but there is "a greater than 50% chance" it isn't.
Then we get Dishi in front of a Stop The Boats lectern. Speaking in his Jackanory voice. Quite literally telling stories to political toddlers.
They know the plan - laughable to even use that word - doesn't work practically. They know it doesn't work legally. But they also know their remaining voters don't care, they just want action. Though I don't think "blame the courts" works as an excuse any longer.
The third plan in three years and legislation so obviously designed for dividing lines rather than results is too obviously transparent to fool most voters. And making Braverman the face of it just compounds the problem. She is massively unpopular.
I really can’t see it ending well for Sunak. The people he is targeting are those most likely to buy the Farage/Reform betrayal narrative that will inevitably explode into the right-wing press this summer when the boats keep on coming.
Cooper was right yesterday: people want results, not performative gestures that won’t work.
In a serious question:
How *would* anyone stop the boats?
It doesn't seem to me, short of major military operations on the beaches of Northern France, which ain't happening, or arranging odd accidents for all the traffickers - and even that would presumably pause rather than eliminate the problem - that there's much to be done about it.
That doesn't mean we can't still point and laugh at the stupidity of this idea, but are there are any concrete suggestions? If so, let's hear them.
Stopping the boats, if that's your main aim, is pretty simple. A UK asylum centre in Calais and ferry tickets to Dover.
Stopping boats without letting people in another way? Can't help you there.
Is it that simple? Will the Albanians simply give up when rejected at Calais?
Quite possibly. But it reduces the numbers of boat people, which makes it easier to catch and return those who remain.
Part of our problem at the moment is that the rate of people coming in vastly exceeds our state ability to process them.
So the UK is reduced to bloodcurdling threats that it probably can't carry out. Partly human rights law, but partly because the UK state can't reliably carry out anything. Trust me- that tends not to work.
Pitiful
Making asylum easier to claim at Calais - then giving the lucky ones tickets for the Dover Ferry - will just INCREASE the pull factor of Calais
Tens of thousands more will try. What will those that fail then do? Will they think “shit, at least the UK gave me a fair go, oh well, now I’ll head back to Albania/Somalia”
Or will they simply try and cross illegally? As before, but in even greater numbers?
You don’t have an answer which doesn’t make you extremely uncomfortable. So you would rather provide no answer at all. It’s a kind of cowardice
If you provide safe routes, then there is far less argument legally about those who choose not to use them.
Where are we going to deport them? We are incapable of deporting anyone because liberal lawyers go mad and Gary lineker calls you goebbels and everyone is pathetically spineless
And if we did start actually deporting those that failed the Calais asylum test then they’d all go back to destroying their documents and using the dinghies
It’s just another pitifuf non answer. It is pathetic
Liberal lawyers going mad or staying sane does not change the law.
If you want the policy objectives that the govt is pushing with their policy you need to be angry with the govt for not leaving the refugee convention not liberal lawyers.
I have not read the proposed Bill or much of the news regarding it so can't comment specifically on the proposed Bill.
However Australia is in the Refugee Convention and has had a similar policy before. Which was ruled legal by its domestic Courts. And the policy has worked in its objectives.
If you disagree with the policy, then that should be a matter for political debate, not legal arguments. If Parliament passes a law saying this is legal, then that should be the law, just as it was elsewhere.
You dont need my opinion, the government does not think it legal!
Has the Government put a "notwithstanding" clause in?
If so, then its legal, is it not?
Get Betfair to put a market up and happy to accommodate backers of legal.
Parliament sets the law. If Parliament says something is legal, then it is legal.
Men marrying other men wasn't legal. Parliament changed the law, now it is. That is what Parliament is for.
Have you heard of international law?
Yes. Its a bad joke.
Parliament can override international law.
It can't override it, it can legislate to make it unenforceable in the UK. The UK then lives with the consequences of that because the international law still exists. In the case of the illegal immigration legislation, though, the government is saying it is not acting contrary to international law or seeking to make it unenforceable.
We live with the consequences then, if that is what we choose to do, that is a matter for politics not lawyers.
If Parliament passes a Bill overriding international law domestically, eg by legalising cannabis which I wholeheartedly support in violation of international law, then there are no international courts that can override the UK Parliament. Nor should there be.
Or the UN Declaration on Human Rights, that asserts the rights of all human beings to live in dignity regardless of ethnic origin, or the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Or the Geneva Conventions. Do you think the sovereign body in any sovereign country ought to be able to renege on any international law it wishes to, so long as it only does so domestically? So for example the Brazilian parliament could decide to exterminate the Yanomami people and they shouldn't be held responsible before an international court if they did?
Yes I 100% think any sovereign body ought to be able to renege on any international law it wishes to do so, domestically.
If the Brazilian Parliament chose to exterminate a people then that would be a matter for international relations to resolve, not lawyers or courts. Just as China's acts of genocide against the Rohingya and others.
A genuinely robust international legal system that punishes and deters such atrocities, regardless of who commits them and where they happen, is a challenging aspiration, but it's a bit odd to say it isn't a worthwhile one.
Its not a worthwhile one, because the meaning of atrocity changes. The problem is what's good today can be awful in the future, or vice-versa/
The law should be a living, breathing, and most importantly evolving body - which is what Parliament is for.
If you go back just ten years it was illegal for two men to marry each other in Scotland. If you go back ~fifty years it was illegal for two men to love each other and could result in imprisonment. If you go back hundreds of years, it could result in execution.
You operate as if international law is "good" so should be set in stone, but the law has never been that way. Ossifying laws in stone is how you end up with the madness that is the US Second Amendment and routine mass murder in schools. Ossifying laws in stone is how you end up with gays being stoned to death.
If an international law signed in the 50s put a prohibition on same sex marriage, then I think Parliament would be well within its rights to say that notwithstanding the law we are legalising it. If an international law signed in the 18th century had a Second Amendment style ruling then following Dunblane I'd think that Parliament is perfectly entitled to say that the law needs to change.
We should seek to tackle atrocities internationally, but that needs to be done via international relations, not laws locking in the views of the past to be enforced in the future.
A robust and dynamic international legal system then. One which moves with the times as all good legal systems should. To inter alia punish and deter atrocities. As I say, most odd to not at least grant this to be a worthwhile aspiration. Still, you're you. With your reverence for the Nation State.
It is not a reverence for the Nation State, it is a reverence for democracy. Democracy is attached to the Nation State.
Our legal system evolves with the times due to Parliament, and we have routine elections to Parliament.
If you want international law to evolve with the times and not be ossified to the past saying that cannabis must be illegal/gays must be stoned/second amendment etc then without a global Parliament how do you achieve that?
And if there is a global Parliament, then haven't you just globalised all the issues you decry with the Nation State?
If a local council in a deeply conservative part of the country wished to ban homosexuality in accordance with local demand we would say to them and their voters, "Nope, sorry, not on. There's a higher law against you doing that."
IOW some things are too important to be left to the voters. It's therefore not just about democracy. It's about where is the best place in an ideal world - since I did say 'aspiration' remember - for certain fundamental human rights to be protected.
Asserting this is always and forever the nation state, ie there can never be anything so important it can't be left to voters at this level of aggregation, is illogical. It comes from, as I say, revering the nation state itself. Which is what you do, what many people do tbf, odd as it might appear to me.
So if these things can't be left to voters....who gets to decide and where do they get their authority to decide for the rest of us?
People like you? Only if you want a lot of people picking up a gun. I wouldn't trust any small group of deciders so tough we decide as a demos or we have a dictatorship of the bien pensant and that will end in blood
Nice. Bigotry backed up by the blatant threat of violence. Legalise queerbashing or the people will arm themselves?
Where did I say legalise queer bashing...clue I didn't . I commented on "somethings are too important to be left to voters" , looking for a bigotted comment that is one
Sorry if I misinterpreted the subtlety of your position. On closer inspection you are defending only "banning homosexuality" at the point of a gun. Though I still don't really see how you would be able eliminate homosexuality without killing all the homosexuals. Or perhaps deporting them to Rwanda. So sorry if I was unfair.
Let’s be honest, the small boats issue is a complicated and nuanced issue and most of our politicians and news media don’t deal in complexity and nuance.
The solution is an integrated approach - more money to deal with the asylum backlog, a more accessible and responsive asylum process, closer co-operation with Europe (ho-hum) and yes disincentivising the concept of trying to enter the country illegally.
Unfortunately because we are so polarised and because of the lack of complexity and nuance speaking about any one of these things in depth immediately marks you out as either a lefty loony liberal or a raving nazi. I don’t have much faith in Starmer to reset this situation but I have more than the chancers in government.
Spot on.
This is a classic Silver Bullet Fallacy issue, when the answer is to have multiple overlapping policies:
- dramatically faster processing of asylum applications: the Netherlands manages the vast majority of theirs in three months, and that means you don't have lots of people *seeking* asylum hanging around - offshore processing centers - a proper clampdown on those who employ (or profit from) illegal immigrants. - cooperation with the French to discourage small boats.
It is also worth remembering that the UK had 50% more asylum seekers arriving back in 2002 (close to 100,000) - so while the boats may have made it slightly easier, there are many ways and means for people to enter the UK and to claim asylum. The boats just make it much more visible.
Why does the government not try any of these sensible options?
We paid the french for their cooperation while we were in the EU, the numbers getting here illegally were about the same as when we paid the french for cooperation as they are now, a reasonable person might suspect that french cooperation amounted to them cooperating with taking money while doing nothing
I don't think that's true: the number of arrivals by boat is dramatically higher than it was four years ago.
If Labour think these plans are so appalling and the numbers so misleading, it is incumbent on them to release THEIR plan to stop the boats. And also the estimate of how many would come under their plan.
In spite of what SKS says in practise labour favour very liberal borders. Not quite open borders but not far off.
Mind you so did new labour and Cameron's Tories but they put nothing in place to support the additional people due to their dishonesty over the matter and not wanting to rock the property boat I'd guess
If Labour are throwing their toys out of the pram over this, they can give us an alternative. Not just guff about "safe and humane routes". Give us details and numbers.
100m due to arrive
Sunak can say he stopped 99m at GE2024
SKS will say he would have stopped 99.5m if he had been in power
Sunak will say Labour would have let in 100m
SKS will say no we wouldnt we have a plan/mission/pledge
And on and on and on
BULLLSSSHHHHIIIITTTT
What is bullshit is you claiming anyone has said 100m will arrive.
What does "there are 100m ... they are coming here"" mean
This
"TSE is just another LEFTY LAWYER standing in our way!"
I am much a lefty lawyer as Margaret Thatcher.
In Suella Braverman's Conservative Party, Margaret Thatcher would be seen as a hand-wringing lefty lawyer too.
Recently I was called a banker (sic).
That really hurt more than being called the p word.
Just because I've worked in banking and financial services for nearly 12 years doesn't make me a banker.
I am relieved that you are cool with being referred to as a "lefty". I suppose everything is relative, and compared to Johnsonian Conservatism, "lefty" is a broad church term.
Let’s be honest, the small boats issue is a complicated and nuanced issue and most of our politicians and news media don’t deal in complexity and nuance.
The solution is an integrated approach - more money to deal with the asylum backlog, a more accessible and responsive asylum process, closer co-operation with Europe (ho-hum) and yes disincentivising the concept of trying to enter the country illegally.
Unfortunately because we are so polarised and because of the lack of complexity and nuance speaking about any one of these things in depth immediately marks you out as either a lefty loony liberal or a raving nazi. I don’t have much faith in Starmer to reset this situation but I have more than the chancers in government.
Spot on.
This is a classic Silver Bullet Fallacy issue, when the answer is to have multiple overlapping policies:
- dramatically faster processing of asylum applications: the Netherlands manages the vast majority of theirs in three months, and that means you don't have lots of people *seeking* asylum hanging around - offshore processing centers - a proper clampdown on those who employ (or profit from) illegal immigrants. - cooperation with the French to discourage small boats.
It is also worth remembering that the UK had 50% more asylum seekers arriving back in 2002 (close to 100,000) - so while the boats may have made it slightly easier, there are many ways and means for people to enter the UK and to claim asylum. The boats just make it much more visible.
Why does the government not try any of these sensible options?
They all cost money.
Although, I would suspect they probably *save* money in the medium term.
Had a chat with a barrister with impeccably right wing credentials and no fan of illegal border crossings.
Says yesterday's legislation is simply the worst piece of drafted legislation he has ever seen.
Like it was focus grouped and then drafted.
He feels sorry for the GLD teams that will have to defend this shit in court.
There's a retroactive clause in the bill that must have been written by Lionel Hutz.
It isn't serious law. Braverman sends a letter to Tory MPs saying she doesn't know if the bill is legal but there is "a greater than 50% chance" it isn't.
Then we get Dishi in front of a Stop The Boats lectern. Speaking in his Jackanory voice. Quite literally telling stories to political toddlers.
They know the plan - laughable to even use that word - doesn't work practically. They know it doesn't work legally. But they also know their remaining voters don't care, they just want action. Though I don't think "blame the courts" works as an excuse any longer.
The third plan in three years and legislation so obviously designed for dividing lines rather than results is too obviously transparent to fool most voters. And making Braverman the face of it just compounds the problem. She is massively unpopular.
I really can’t see it ending well for Sunak. The people he is targeting are those most likely to buy the Farage/Reform betrayal narrative that will inevitably explode into the right-wing press this summer when the boats keep on coming.
Cooper was right yesterday: people want results, not performative gestures that won’t work.
In a serious question:
How *would* anyone stop the boats?
It doesn't seem to me, short of major military operations on the beaches of Northern France, which ain't happening, or arranging odd accidents for all the traffickers - and even that would presumably pause rather than eliminate the problem - that there's much to be done about it.
That doesn't mean we can't still point and laugh at the stupidity of this idea, but are there are any concrete suggestions? If so, let's hear them.
Stopping the boats, if that's your main aim, is pretty simple. A UK asylum centre in Calais and ferry tickets to Dover.
Stopping boats without letting people in another way? Can't help you there.
Is it that simple? Will the Albanians simply give up when rejected at Calais?
Quite possibly. But it reduces the numbers of boat people, which makes it easier to catch and return those who remain.
Part of our problem at the moment is that the rate of people coming in vastly exceeds our state ability to process them.
So the UK is reduced to bloodcurdling threats that it probably can't carry out. Partly human rights law, but partly because the UK state can't reliably carry out anything. Trust me- that tends not to work.
Pitiful
Making asylum easier to claim at Calais - then giving the lucky ones tickets for the Dover Ferry - will just INCREASE the pull factor of Calais
Tens of thousands more will try. What will those that fail then do? Will they think “shit, at least the UK gave me a fair go, oh well, now I’ll head back to Albania/Somalia”
Or will they simply try and cross illegally? As before, but in even greater numbers?
You don’t have an answer which doesn’t make you extremely uncomfortable. So you would rather provide no answer at all. It’s a kind of cowardice
If you provide safe routes, then there is far less argument legally about those who choose not to use them.
Where are we going to deport them? We are incapable of deporting anyone because liberal lawyers go mad and Gary lineker calls you goebbels and everyone is pathetically spineless
And if we did start actually deporting those that failed the Calais asylum test then they’d all go back to destroying their documents and using the dinghies
It’s just another pitifuf non answer. It is pathetic
Liberal lawyers going mad or staying sane does not change the law.
If you want the policy objectives that the govt is pushing with their policy you need to be angry with the govt for not leaving the refugee convention not liberal lawyers.
I have not read the proposed Bill or much of the news regarding it so can't comment specifically on the proposed Bill.
However Australia is in the Refugee Convention and has had a similar policy before. Which was ruled legal by its domestic Courts. And the policy has worked in its objectives.
If you disagree with the policy, then that should be a matter for political debate, not legal arguments. If Parliament passes a law saying this is legal, then that should be the law, just as it was elsewhere.
You dont need my opinion, the government does not think it legal!
Has the Government put a "notwithstanding" clause in?
If so, then its legal, is it not?
Get Betfair to put a market up and happy to accommodate backers of legal.
Parliament sets the law. If Parliament says something is legal, then it is legal.
Men marrying other men wasn't legal. Parliament changed the law, now it is. That is what Parliament is for.
Have you heard of international law?
Yes. Its a bad joke.
Parliament can override international law.
It can't override it, it can legislate to make it unenforceable in the UK. The UK then lives with the consequences of that because the international law still exists. In the case of the illegal immigration legislation, though, the government is saying it is not acting contrary to international law or seeking to make it unenforceable.
We live with the consequences then, if that is what we choose to do, that is a matter for politics not lawyers.
If Parliament passes a Bill overriding international law domestically, eg by legalising cannabis which I wholeheartedly support in violation of international law, then there are no international courts that can override the UK Parliament. Nor should there be.
Or the UN Declaration on Human Rights, that asserts the rights of all human beings to live in dignity regardless of ethnic origin, or the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Or the Geneva Conventions. Do you think the sovereign body in any sovereign country ought to be able to renege on any international law it wishes to, so long as it only does so domestically? So for example the Brazilian parliament could decide to exterminate the Yanomami people and they shouldn't be held responsible before an international court if they did?
Yes I 100% think any sovereign body ought to be able to renege on any international law it wishes to do so, domestically.
If the Brazilian Parliament chose to exterminate a people then that would be a matter for international relations to resolve, not lawyers or courts. Just as China's acts of genocide against the Rohingya and others.
A genuinely robust international legal system that punishes and deters such atrocities, regardless of who commits them and where they happen, is a challenging aspiration, but it's a bit odd to say it isn't a worthwhile one.
Its not a worthwhile one, because the meaning of atrocity changes. The problem is what's good today can be awful in the future, or vice-versa/
The law should be a living, breathing, and most importantly evolving body - which is what Parliament is for.
If you go back just ten years it was illegal for two men to marry each other in Scotland. If you go back ~fifty years it was illegal for two men to love each other and could result in imprisonment. If you go back hundreds of years, it could result in execution.
You operate as if international law is "good" so should be set in stone, but the law has never been that way. Ossifying laws in stone is how you end up with the madness that is the US Second Amendment and routine mass murder in schools. Ossifying laws in stone is how you end up with gays being stoned to death.
If an international law signed in the 50s put a prohibition on same sex marriage, then I think Parliament would be well within its rights to say that notwithstanding the law we are legalising it. If an international law signed in the 18th century had a Second Amendment style ruling then following Dunblane I'd think that Parliament is perfectly entitled to say that the law needs to change.
We should seek to tackle atrocities internationally, but that needs to be done via international relations, not laws locking in the views of the past to be enforced in the future.
A robust and dynamic international legal system then. One which moves with the times as all good legal systems should. To inter alia punish and deter atrocities. As I say, most odd to not at least grant this to be a worthwhile aspiration. Still, you're you. With your reverence for the Nation State.
It is not a reverence for the Nation State, it is a reverence for democracy. Democracy is attached to the Nation State.
Our legal system evolves with the times due to Parliament, and we have routine elections to Parliament.
If you want international law to evolve with the times and not be ossified to the past saying that cannabis must be illegal/gays must be stoned/second amendment etc then without a global Parliament how do you achieve that?
And if there is a global Parliament, then haven't you just globalised all the issues you decry with the Nation State?
If a local council in a deeply conservative part of the country wished to ban homosexuality in accordance with local demand we would say to them and their voters, "Nope, sorry, not on. There's a higher law against you doing that."
IOW some things are too important to be left to the voters. It's therefore not just about democracy. It's about where is the best place in an ideal world - since I did say 'aspiration' remember - for certain fundamental human rights to be protected.
Asserting this is always and forever the nation state, ie there can never be anything so important it can't be left to voters at this level of aggregation, is illogical. It comes from, as I say, revering the nation state itself. Which is what you do, what many people do tbf, odd as it might appear to me.
So if these things can't be left to voters....who gets to decide and where do they get their authority to decide for the rest of us?
People like you? Only if you want a lot of people picking up a gun. I wouldn't trust any small group of deciders so tough we decide as a demos or we have a dictatorship of the bien pensant and that will end in blood
Nice. Bigotry backed up by the blatant threat of violence. Legalise queerbashing or the people will arm themselves?
Where did I say legalise queer bashing...clue I didn't . I commented on "somethings are too important to be left to voters" , looking for a bigotted comment that is one
Sorry if I misinterpreted the subtlety of your position. On closer inspection you are defending only "banning homosexuality" at the point of a gun. Though I still don't really see how you would be able eliminate homosexuality without killing all the homosexuals. Or perhaps deporting them to Rwanda. So sorry if I was unfair.
For christ sake I didn't opine on homosexuality you are thicker than I thought so let me spell it out I will fetch my crayons especially
People making decisions the voters have no say in is the first step to dictatorship
A dictatorship leads to people objecting violently because its the only way to get a say
Let’s be honest, the small boats issue is a complicated and nuanced issue and most of our politicians and news media don’t deal in complexity and nuance.
The solution is an integrated approach - more money to deal with the asylum backlog, a more accessible and responsive asylum process, closer co-operation with Europe (ho-hum) and yes disincentivising the concept of trying to enter the country illegally.
Unfortunately because we are so polarised and because of the lack of complexity and nuance speaking about any one of these things in depth immediately marks you out as either a lefty loony liberal or a raving nazi. I don’t have much faith in Starmer to reset this situation but I have more than the chancers in government.
Spot on.
This is a classic Silver Bullet Fallacy issue, when the answer is to have multiple overlapping policies:
- dramatically faster processing of asylum applications: the Netherlands manages the vast majority of theirs in three months, and that means you don't have lots of people *seeking* asylum hanging around - offshore processing centers - a proper clampdown on those who employ (or profit from) illegal immigrants. - cooperation with the French to discourage small boats.
It is also worth remembering that the UK had 50% more asylum seekers arriving back in 2002 (close to 100,000) - so while the boats may have made it slightly easier, there are many ways and means for people to enter the UK and to claim asylum. The boats just make it much more visible.
Why does the government not try any of these sensible options?
We paid the french for their cooperation while we were in the EU, the numbers getting here illegally were about the same as when we paid the french for cooperation as they are now, a reasonable person might suspect that french cooperation amounted to them cooperating with taking money while doing nothing
Indeed - a suggestion that the money might be made dependent on evidence of action was met with the reply that that would make an agreement impossible.
If Labour think these plans are so appalling and the numbers so misleading, it is incumbent on them to release THEIR plan to stop the boats. And also the estimate of how many would come under their plan.
In spite of what SKS says in practise labour favour very liberal borders. Not quite open borders but not far off.
Mind you so did new labour and Cameron's Tories but they put nothing in place to support the additional people due to their dishonesty over the matter and not wanting to rock the property boat I'd guess
If Labour are throwing their toys out of the pram over this, they can give us an alternative. Not just guff about "safe and humane routes". Give us details and numbers.
100m due to arrive
Sunak can say he stopped 99m at GE2024
SKS will say he would have stopped 99.5m if he had been in power
Sunak will say Labour would have let in 100m
SKS will say no we wouldnt we have a plan/mission/pledge
And on and on and on
BULLLSSSHHHHIIIITTTT
What is bullshit is you claiming anyone has said 100m will arrive.
What does "there are 100m ... they are coming here"" mean
This
"TSE is just another LEFTY LAWYER standing in our way!"
I am much a lefty lawyer as Margaret Thatcher.
In Suella Braverman's Conservative Party, Margaret Thatcher would be seen as a hand-wringing lefty lawyer too.
Recently I was called a banker (sic).
That really hurt more than being called the p word.
Just because I've worked in banking and financial services for nearly 12 years doesn't make me a banker.
I am relieved that you are cool with being referred to as a "lefty". I suppose everything is relative, and compared to Johnsonian Conservatism, "lefty" is a broad church term.
On PB I have been called both far right and a lefty.
Had a chat with a barrister with impeccably right wing credentials and no fan of illegal border crossings.
Says yesterday's legislation is simply the worst piece of drafted legislation he has ever seen.
Like it was focus grouped and then drafted.
He feels sorry for the GLD teams that will have to defend this shit in court.
There's a retroactive clause in the bill that must have been written by Lionel Hutz.
It isn't serious law. Braverman sends a letter to Tory MPs saying she doesn't know if the bill is legal but there is "a greater than 50% chance" it isn't.
Then we get Dishi in front of a Stop The Boats lectern. Speaking in his Jackanory voice. Quite literally telling stories to political toddlers.
They know the plan - laughable to even use that word - doesn't work practically. They know it doesn't work legally. But they also know their remaining voters don't care, they just want action. Though I don't think "blame the courts" works as an excuse any longer.
The third plan in three years and legislation so obviously designed for dividing lines rather than results is too obviously transparent to fool most voters. And making Braverman the face of it just compounds the problem. She is massively unpopular.
I really can’t see it ending well for Sunak. The people he is targeting are those most likely to buy the Farage/Reform betrayal narrative that will inevitably explode into the right-wing press this summer when the boats keep on coming.
Cooper was right yesterday: people want results, not performative gestures that won’t work.
In a serious question:
How *would* anyone stop the boats?
It doesn't seem to me, short of major military operations on the beaches of Northern France, which ain't happening, or arranging odd accidents for all the traffickers - and even that would presumably pause rather than eliminate the problem - that there's much to be done about it.
That doesn't mean we can't still point and laugh at the stupidity of this idea, but are there are any concrete suggestions? If so, let's hear them.
Stopping the boats, if that's your main aim, is pretty simple. A UK asylum centre in Calais and ferry tickets to Dover.
Stopping boats without letting people in another way? Can't help you there.
Is it that simple? Will the Albanians simply give up when rejected at Calais?
Quite possibly. But it reduces the numbers of boat people, which makes it easier to catch and return those who remain.
Part of our problem at the moment is that the rate of people coming in vastly exceeds our state ability to process them.
So the UK is reduced to bloodcurdling threats that it probably can't carry out. Partly human rights law, but partly because the UK state can't reliably carry out anything. Trust me- that tends not to work.
Pitiful
Making asylum easier to claim at Calais - then giving the lucky ones tickets for the Dover Ferry - will just INCREASE the pull factor of Calais
Tens of thousands more will try. What will those that fail then do? Will they think “shit, at least the UK gave me a fair go, oh well, now I’ll head back to Albania/Somalia”
Or will they simply try and cross illegally? As before, but in even greater numbers?
You don’t have an answer which doesn’t make you extremely uncomfortable. So you would rather provide no answer at all. It’s a kind of cowardice
If you provide safe routes, then there is far less argument legally about those who choose not to use them.
Where are we going to deport them? We are incapable of deporting anyone because liberal lawyers go mad and Gary lineker calls you goebbels and everyone is pathetically spineless
And if we did start actually deporting those that failed the Calais asylum test then they’d all go back to destroying their documents and using the dinghies
It’s just another pitifuf non answer. It is pathetic
Liberal lawyers going mad or staying sane does not change the law.
If you want the policy objectives that the govt is pushing with their policy you need to be angry with the govt for not leaving the refugee convention not liberal lawyers.
I have not read the proposed Bill or much of the news regarding it so can't comment specifically on the proposed Bill.
However Australia is in the Refugee Convention and has had a similar policy before. Which was ruled legal by its domestic Courts. And the policy has worked in its objectives.
If you disagree with the policy, then that should be a matter for political debate, not legal arguments. If Parliament passes a law saying this is legal, then that should be the law, just as it was elsewhere.
You dont need my opinion, the government does not think it legal!
Has the Government put a "notwithstanding" clause in?
If so, then its legal, is it not?
Get Betfair to put a market up and happy to accommodate backers of legal.
Parliament sets the law. If Parliament says something is legal, then it is legal.
Men marrying other men wasn't legal. Parliament changed the law, now it is. That is what Parliament is for.
Have you heard of international law?
Yes. Its a bad joke.
Parliament can override international law.
It can't override it, it can legislate to make it unenforceable in the UK. The UK then lives with the consequences of that because the international law still exists. In the case of the illegal immigration legislation, though, the government is saying it is not acting contrary to international law or seeking to make it unenforceable.
We live with the consequences then, if that is what we choose to do, that is a matter for politics not lawyers.
If Parliament passes a Bill overriding international law domestically, eg by legalising cannabis which I wholeheartedly support in violation of international law, then there are no international courts that can override the UK Parliament. Nor should there be.
Or the UN Declaration on Human Rights, that asserts the rights of all human beings to live in dignity regardless of ethnic origin, or the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Or the Geneva Conventions. Do you think the sovereign body in any sovereign country ought to be able to renege on any international law it wishes to, so long as it only does so domestically? So for example the Brazilian parliament could decide to exterminate the Yanomami people and they shouldn't be held responsible before an international court if they did?
Yes I 100% think any sovereign body ought to be able to renege on any international law it wishes to do so, domestically.
If the Brazilian Parliament chose to exterminate a people then that would be a matter for international relations to resolve, not lawyers or courts. Just as China's acts of genocide against the Rohingya and others.
A genuinely robust international legal system that punishes and deters such atrocities, regardless of who commits them and where they happen, is a challenging aspiration, but it's a bit odd to say it isn't a worthwhile one.
Its not a worthwhile one, because the meaning of atrocity changes. The problem is what's good today can be awful in the future, or vice-versa/
The law should be a living, breathing, and most importantly evolving body - which is what Parliament is for.
If you go back just ten years it was illegal for two men to marry each other in Scotland. If you go back ~fifty years it was illegal for two men to love each other and could result in imprisonment. If you go back hundreds of years, it could result in execution.
You operate as if international law is "good" so should be set in stone, but the law has never been that way. Ossifying laws in stone is how you end up with the madness that is the US Second Amendment and routine mass murder in schools. Ossifying laws in stone is how you end up with gays being stoned to death.
If an international law signed in the 50s put a prohibition on same sex marriage, then I think Parliament would be well within its rights to say that notwithstanding the law we are legalising it. If an international law signed in the 18th century had a Second Amendment style ruling then following Dunblane I'd think that Parliament is perfectly entitled to say that the law needs to change.
We should seek to tackle atrocities internationally, but that needs to be done via international relations, not laws locking in the views of the past to be enforced in the future.
A robust and dynamic international legal system then. One which moves with the times as all good legal systems should. To inter alia punish and deter atrocities. As I say, most odd to not at least grant this to be a worthwhile aspiration. Still, you're you. With your reverence for the Nation State.
It is not a reverence for the Nation State, it is a reverence for democracy. Democracy is attached to the Nation State.
Our legal system evolves with the times due to Parliament, and we have routine elections to Parliament.
If you want international law to evolve with the times and not be ossified to the past saying that cannabis must be illegal/gays must be stoned/second amendment etc then without a global Parliament how do you achieve that?
And if there is a global Parliament, then haven't you just globalised all the issues you decry with the Nation State?
If a local council in a deeply conservative part of the country wished to ban homosexuality in accordance with local demand we would say to them and their voters, "Nope, sorry, not on. There's a higher law against you doing that."
IOW some things are too important to be left to the voters. It's therefore not just about democracy. It's about where is the best place in an ideal world - since I did say 'aspiration' remember - for certain fundamental human rights to be protected.
Asserting this is always and forever the nation state, ie there can never be anything so important it can't be left to voters at this level of aggregation, is illogical. It comes from, as I say, revering the nation state itself. Which is what you do, what many people do tbf, odd as it might appear to me.
A local Council is not a country, so can not deprive people of national rights. That is the nation protecting them, yes.
If a country wants to ban homosexuality it can. I would absolutely deplore that, I would be against that, I would be disgusted - but it would be able to do so and many do.
The way to prevent that is to have educated voters who would vote out any Government so repellent, not rely upon flawed and failed international institutions to do so.
Nothing is too important to be left to the voters. Only the voters protect our rights.
So not a fan of article 79 of the German constitution then?
Curious that @GaryLineker was free to raise questions about Qatar’s human rights record - with the blessing of the bbc - over the World Cup , but cannot raise questions of human rights in this country if it involves criticism of government policy …
—
This is an excellent point by Emily. It illustrates the key schism in the current debate over political morality.
Is our countries border also the border of our collective morality?
Let’s be honest, the small boats issue is a complicated and nuanced issue and most of our politicians and news media don’t deal in complexity and nuance.
The solution is an integrated approach - more money to deal with the asylum backlog, a more accessible and responsive asylum process, closer co-operation with Europe (ho-hum) and yes disincentivising the concept of trying to enter the country illegally.
Unfortunately because we are so polarised and because of the lack of complexity and nuance speaking about any one of these things in depth immediately marks you out as either a lefty loony liberal or a raving nazi. I don’t have much faith in Starmer to reset this situation but I have more than the chancers in government.
Spot on.
This is a classic Silver Bullet Fallacy issue, when the answer is to have multiple overlapping policies:
- dramatically faster processing of asylum applications: the Netherlands manages the vast majority of theirs in three months, and that means you don't have lots of people *seeking* asylum hanging around - offshore processing centers - a proper clampdown on those who employ (or profit from) illegal immigrants. - cooperation with the French to discourage small boats.
It is also worth remembering that the UK had 50% more asylum seekers arriving back in 2002 (close to 100,000) - so while the boats may have made it slightly easier, there are many ways and means for people to enter the UK and to claim asylum. The boats just make it much more visible.
Why does the government not try any of these sensible options?
We paid the french for their cooperation while we were in the EU, the numbers getting here illegally were about the same as when we paid the french for cooperation as they are now, a reasonable person might suspect that french cooperation amounted to them cooperating with taking money while doing nothing
I don't think that's true: the number of arrivals by boat is dramatically higher than it was four years ago.
I was referring to those entering the country illegally from france regardless of the mode of transport, you yourself pointed out it was about 100,000 in 2002 and its the about the same now just the route changed from back of a lorry to boats
Let’s be honest, the small boats issue is a complicated and nuanced issue and most of our politicians and news media don’t deal in complexity and nuance.
The solution is an integrated approach - more money to deal with the asylum backlog, a more accessible and responsive asylum process, closer co-operation with Europe (ho-hum) and yes disincentivising the concept of trying to enter the country illegally.
Unfortunately because we are so polarised and because of the lack of complexity and nuance speaking about any one of these things in depth immediately marks you out as either a lefty loony liberal or a raving nazi. I don’t have much faith in Starmer to reset this situation but I have more than the chancers in government.
Spot on.
This is a classic Silver Bullet Fallacy issue, when the answer is to have multiple overlapping policies:
- dramatically faster processing of asylum applications: the Netherlands manages the vast majority of theirs in three months, and that means you don't have lots of people *seeking* asylum hanging around - offshore processing centers - a proper clampdown on those who employ (or profit from) illegal immigrants. - cooperation with the French to discourage small boats. It is also worth remembering that the UK had 50% more asylum seekers arriving back in 2002 (close to 100,000) - so while the boats may have made it slightly easier, there are many ways and means for people to enter the UK and to claim asylum. The boats just make it much more visible.
Are the people arrivng on boats intending to claim asylum - or is that their Plan B if they get caught, rather than arrivng on the beach and disappearing into the black economy?
That is Plan B: they'd much rather disappear into the illegal economy.
But remember those Albanians, it's trivial for them to get into the country. They were staffing those car washes five years ago, before there were any significant number of boat arrivals.
A UK tourist visa costs virtually nothing. You get a Megabus and you tell the nice immigration officer that you're coming to the UK for your cousin's wedding, and no way are you planning on working.
Just to say, there's a similar issue in the US. Everyone talks about a border wall - and yet most illegal immigrants simply came on a tourist visa and never left.
Let’s be honest, the small boats issue is a complicated and nuanced issue and most of our politicians and news media don’t deal in complexity and nuance.
The solution is an integrated approach - more money to deal with the asylum backlog, a more accessible and responsive asylum process, closer co-operation with Europe (ho-hum) and yes disincentivising the concept of trying to enter the country illegally.
Unfortunately because we are so polarised and because of the lack of complexity and nuance speaking about any one of these things in depth immediately marks you out as either a lefty loony liberal or a raving nazi. I don’t have much faith in Starmer to reset this situation but I have more than the chancers in government.
Spot on.
This is a classic Silver Bullet Fallacy issue, when the answer is to have multiple overlapping policies:
- dramatically faster processing of asylum applications: the Netherlands manages the vast majority of theirs in three months, and that means you don't have lots of people *seeking* asylum hanging around - offshore processing centers - a proper clampdown on those who employ (or profit from) illegal immigrants. - cooperation with the French to discourage small boats.
It is also worth remembering that the UK had 50% more asylum seekers arriving back in 2002 (close to 100,000) - so while the boats may have made it slightly easier, there are many ways and means for people to enter the UK and to claim asylum. The boats just make it much more visible.
Why does the government not try any of these sensible options?
We paid the french for their cooperation while we were in the EU, the numbers getting here illegally were about the same as when we paid the french for cooperation as they are now, a reasonable person might suspect that french cooperation amounted to them cooperating with taking money while doing nothing
Indeed - a suggestion that the money might be made dependent on evidence of action was met with the reply that that would make an agreement impossible.
Should have been a red flag really that the deal wasn't worth it but then the government of whichever colour seems prone to signing contracts like that which is why we get capita being paid for delivering nothing that actually works
I had a conversation this morning with a Member of the Public, who thought that we should be able to do what we liked to asylum seekers who were Breaking the Law in coming here.
When I pointed out that even the Home Secretary seems to be acknowledging that might itself involve Breaking the Law, I was told we should be able to do it anyway, because Something Needed Doing.
I conclude there are some people who think it's fine to break the law, and even use law-breaking on other people's part to justify that. Depressing. But the silver lining is that the person I spoke to Doesn't Vote.
Welcome to Constituionalism vs Democracy
In a democracy, the voters have been told they can do what they like.
Constitutionalism was going really well (not really) for the Senatorial Class in Rome. Right up until the Roman people used the senate House itself as a funeral pyre for Clodius.
The answer is that you can’t control The People with The Law. The Law can act as a speed brake, but any attempt to put something’s beyond the reach of the Head Count is ultimately futile.
Had a chat with a barrister with impeccably right wing credentials and no fan of illegal border crossings.
Says yesterday's legislation is simply the worst piece of drafted legislation he has ever seen.
Like it was focus grouped and then drafted.
He feels sorry for the GLD teams that will have to defend this shit in court.
There's a retroactive clause in the bill that must have been written by Lionel Hutz.
It isn't serious law. Braverman sends a letter to Tory MPs saying she doesn't know if the bill is legal but there is "a greater than 50% chance" it isn't.
Then we get Dishi in front of a Stop The Boats lectern. Speaking in his Jackanory voice. Quite literally telling stories to political toddlers.
They know the plan - laughable to even use that word - doesn't work practically. They know it doesn't work legally. But they also know their remaining voters don't care, they just want action. Though I don't think "blame the courts" works as an excuse any longer.
The third plan in three years and legislation so obviously designed for dividing lines rather than results is too obviously transparent to fool most voters. And making Braverman the face of it just compounds the problem. She is massively unpopular.
I really can’t see it ending well for Sunak. The people he is targeting are those most likely to buy the Farage/Reform betrayal narrative that will inevitably explode into the right-wing press this summer when the boats keep on coming.
Cooper was right yesterday: people want results, not performative gestures that won’t work.
In a serious question:
How *would* anyone stop the boats?
It doesn't seem to me, short of major military operations on the beaches of Northern France, which ain't happening, or arranging odd accidents for all the traffickers - and even that would presumably pause rather than eliminate the problem - that there's much to be done about it.
That doesn't mean we can't still point and laugh at the stupidity of this idea, but are there are any concrete suggestions? If so, let's hear them.
Stopping the boats, if that's your main aim, is pretty simple. A UK asylum centre in Calais and ferry tickets to Dover.
Stopping boats without letting people in another way? Can't help you there.
Is it that simple? Will the Albanians simply give up when rejected at Calais?
Quite possibly. But it reduces the numbers of boat people, which makes it easier to catch and return those who remain.
Part of our problem at the moment is that the rate of people coming in vastly exceeds our state ability to process them.
So the UK is reduced to bloodcurdling threats that it probably can't carry out. Partly human rights law, but partly because the UK state can't reliably carry out anything. Trust me- that tends not to work.
Pitiful
Making asylum easier to claim at Calais - then giving the lucky ones tickets for the Dover Ferry - will just INCREASE the pull factor of Calais
Tens of thousands more will try. What will those that fail then do? Will they think “shit, at least the UK gave me a fair go, oh well, now I’ll head back to Albania/Somalia”
Or will they simply try and cross illegally? As before, but in even greater numbers?
You don’t have an answer which doesn’t make you extremely uncomfortable. So you would rather provide no answer at all. It’s a kind of cowardice
If you provide safe routes, then there is far less argument legally about those who choose not to use them.
Where are we going to deport them? We are incapable of deporting anyone because liberal lawyers go mad and Gary lineker calls you goebbels and everyone is pathetically spineless
And if we did start actually deporting those that failed the Calais asylum test then they’d all go back to destroying their documents and using the dinghies
It’s just another pitifuf non answer. It is pathetic
Liberal lawyers going mad or staying sane does not change the law.
If you want the policy objectives that the govt is pushing with their policy you need to be angry with the govt for not leaving the refugee convention not liberal lawyers.
I have not read the proposed Bill or much of the news regarding it so can't comment specifically on the proposed Bill.
However Australia is in the Refugee Convention and has had a similar policy before. Which was ruled legal by its domestic Courts. And the policy has worked in its objectives.
If you disagree with the policy, then that should be a matter for political debate, not legal arguments. If Parliament passes a law saying this is legal, then that should be the law, just as it was elsewhere.
You dont need my opinion, the government does not think it legal!
Has the Government put a "notwithstanding" clause in?
If so, then its legal, is it not?
Get Betfair to put a market up and happy to accommodate backers of legal.
Parliament sets the law. If Parliament says something is legal, then it is legal.
Men marrying other men wasn't legal. Parliament changed the law, now it is. That is what Parliament is for.
Have you heard of international law?
Yes. Its a bad joke.
Parliament can override international law.
It can't override it, it can legislate to make it unenforceable in the UK. The UK then lives with the consequences of that because the international law still exists. In the case of the illegal immigration legislation, though, the government is saying it is not acting contrary to international law or seeking to make it unenforceable.
We live with the consequences then, if that is what we choose to do, that is a matter for politics not lawyers.
If Parliament passes a Bill overriding international law domestically, eg by legalising cannabis which I wholeheartedly support in violation of international law, then there are no international courts that can override the UK Parliament. Nor should there be.
Or the UN Declaration on Human Rights, that asserts the rights of all human beings to live in dignity regardless of ethnic origin, or the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Or the Geneva Conventions. Do you think the sovereign body in any sovereign country ought to be able to renege on any international law it wishes to, so long as it only does so domestically? So for example the Brazilian parliament could decide to exterminate the Yanomami people and they shouldn't be held responsible before an international court if they did?
Yes I 100% think any sovereign body ought to be able to renege on any international law it wishes to do so, domestically.
If the Brazilian Parliament chose to exterminate a people then that would be a matter for international relations to resolve, not lawyers or courts. Just as China's acts of genocide against the Rohingya and others.
A genuinely robust international legal system that punishes and deters such atrocities, regardless of who commits them and where they happen, is a challenging aspiration, but it's a bit odd to say it isn't a worthwhile one.
Its not a worthwhile one, because the meaning of atrocity changes. The problem is what's good today can be awful in the future, or vice-versa/
The law should be a living, breathing, and most importantly evolving body - which is what Parliament is for.
If you go back just ten years it was illegal for two men to marry each other in Scotland. If you go back ~fifty years it was illegal for two men to love each other and could result in imprisonment. If you go back hundreds of years, it could result in execution.
You operate as if international law is "good" so should be set in stone, but the law has never been that way. Ossifying laws in stone is how you end up with the madness that is the US Second Amendment and routine mass murder in schools. Ossifying laws in stone is how you end up with gays being stoned to death.
If an international law signed in the 50s put a prohibition on same sex marriage, then I think Parliament would be well within its rights to say that notwithstanding the law we are legalising it. If an international law signed in the 18th century had a Second Amendment style ruling then following Dunblane I'd think that Parliament is perfectly entitled to say that the law needs to change.
We should seek to tackle atrocities internationally, but that needs to be done via international relations, not laws locking in the views of the past to be enforced in the future.
A robust and dynamic international legal system then. One which moves with the times as all good legal systems should. To inter alia punish and deter atrocities. As I say, most odd to not at least grant this to be a worthwhile aspiration. Still, you're you. With your reverence for the Nation State.
It is not a reverence for the Nation State, it is a reverence for democracy. Democracy is attached to the Nation State.
Our legal system evolves with the times due to Parliament, and we have routine elections to Parliament.
If you want international law to evolve with the times and not be ossified to the past saying that cannabis must be illegal/gays must be stoned/second amendment etc then without a global Parliament how do you achieve that?
And if there is a global Parliament, then haven't you just globalised all the issues you decry with the Nation State?
If a local council in a deeply conservative part of the country wished to ban homosexuality in accordance with local demand we would say to them and their voters, "Nope, sorry, not on. There's a higher law against you doing that."
IOW some things are too important to be left to the voters. It's therefore not just about democracy. It's about where is the best place in an ideal world - since I did say 'aspiration' remember - for certain fundamental human rights to be protected.
Asserting this is always and forever the nation state, ie there can never be anything so important it can't be left to voters at this level of aggregation, is illogical. It comes from, as I say, revering the nation state itself. Which is what you do, what many people do tbf, odd as it might appear to me.
So if these things can't be left to voters....who gets to decide and where do they get their authority to decide for the rest of us?
People like you? Only if you want a lot of people picking up a gun. I wouldn't trust any small group of deciders so tough we decide as a demos or we have a dictatorship of the bien pensant and that will end in blood
Not PURELY to voters. Eg it should be much much harder to pass laws violating basic human rights than to cut taxes. And then the question is: so at what level should human rights be legally protected? Local? National? International?
I'm saying the level should be as high as possible. Why assert as some belief set in stone that it should go no higher than the nation state as if the nation state is something sacred? That makes little sense to me.
Let’s be honest, the small boats issue is a complicated and nuanced issue and most of our politicians and news media don’t deal in complexity and nuance.
The solution is an integrated approach - more money to deal with the asylum backlog, a more accessible and responsive asylum process, closer co-operation with Europe (ho-hum) and yes disincentivising the concept of trying to enter the country illegally.
Unfortunately because we are so polarised and because of the lack of complexity and nuance speaking about any one of these things in depth immediately marks you out as either a lefty loony liberal or a raving nazi. I don’t have much faith in Starmer to reset this situation but I have more than the chancers in government.
Spot on.
This is a classic Silver Bullet Fallacy issue, when the answer is to have multiple overlapping policies:
- dramatically faster processing of asylum applications: the Netherlands manages the vast majority of theirs in three months, and that means you don't have lots of people *seeking* asylum hanging around - offshore processing centers - a proper clampdown on those who employ (or profit from) illegal immigrants. - cooperation with the French to discourage small boats.
It is also worth remembering that the UK had 50% more asylum seekers arriving back in 2002 (close to 100,000) - so while the boats may have made it slightly easier, there are many ways and means for people to enter the UK and to claim asylum. The boats just make it much more visible.
Why does the government not try any of these sensible options?
We paid the french for their cooperation while we were in the EU, the numbers getting here illegally were about the same as when we paid the french for cooperation as they are now, a reasonable person might suspect that french cooperation amounted to them cooperating with taking money while doing nothing
I don't think that's true: the number of arrivals by boat is dramatically higher than it was four years ago.
Let’s be honest, the small boats issue is a complicated and nuanced issue and most of our politicians and news media don’t deal in complexity and nuance.
The solution is an integrated approach - more money to deal with the asylum backlog, a more accessible and responsive asylum process, closer co-operation with Europe (ho-hum) and yes disincentivising the concept of trying to enter the country illegally.
Unfortunately because we are so polarised and because of the lack of complexity and nuance speaking about any one of these things in depth immediately marks you out as either a lefty loony liberal or a raving nazi. I don’t have much faith in Starmer to reset this situation but I have more than the chancers in government.
Spot on.
This is a classic Silver Bullet Fallacy issue, when the answer is to have multiple overlapping policies:
- dramatically faster processing of asylum applications: the Netherlands manages the vast majority of theirs in three months, and that means you don't have lots of people *seeking* asylum hanging around - offshore processing centers - a proper clampdown on those who employ (or profit from) illegal immigrants. - cooperation with the French to discourage small boats.
It is also worth remembering that the UK had 50% more asylum seekers arriving back in 2002 (close to 100,000) - so while the boats may have made it slightly easier, there are many ways and means for people to enter the UK and to claim asylum. The boats just make it much more visible.
Why does the government not try any of these sensible options?
We paid the french for their cooperation while we were in the EU, the numbers getting here illegally were about the same as when we paid the french for cooperation as they are now, a reasonable person might suspect that french cooperation amounted to them cooperating with taking money while doing nothing
Indeed - a suggestion that the money might be made dependent on evidence of action was met with the reply that that would make an agreement impossible.
Should have been a red flag really that the deal wasn't worth it but then the government of whichever colour seems prone to signing contracts like that which is why we get capita being paid for delivering nothing that actually works
The French thought that we were being sensible. It turned out we expected them to do something.
Why should politicians in the U.K. think that politicians in France would inconvenience French voters to make U.K. people happy? They assumed that the U.K. politicians were paying for theatre, not actual action.
Had a chat with a barrister with impeccably right wing credentials and no fan of illegal border crossings.
Says yesterday's legislation is simply the worst piece of drafted legislation he has ever seen.
Like it was focus grouped and then drafted.
He feels sorry for the GLD teams that will have to defend this shit in court.
There's a retroactive clause in the bill that must have been written by Lionel Hutz.
It isn't serious law. Braverman sends a letter to Tory MPs saying she doesn't know if the bill is legal but there is "a greater than 50% chance" it isn't.
Then we get Dishi in front of a Stop The Boats lectern. Speaking in his Jackanory voice. Quite literally telling stories to political toddlers.
They know the plan - laughable to even use that word - doesn't work practically. They know it doesn't work legally. But they also know their remaining voters don't care, they just want action. Though I don't think "blame the courts" works as an excuse any longer.
The third plan in three years and legislation so obviously designed for dividing lines rather than results is too obviously transparent to fool most voters. And making Braverman the face of it just compounds the problem. She is massively unpopular.
I really can’t see it ending well for Sunak. The people he is targeting are those most likely to buy the Farage/Reform betrayal narrative that will inevitably explode into the right-wing press this summer when the boats keep on coming.
Cooper was right yesterday: people want results, not performative gestures that won’t work.
In a serious question:
How *would* anyone stop the boats?
It doesn't seem to me, short of major military operations on the beaches of Northern France, which ain't happening, or arranging odd accidents for all the traffickers - and even that would presumably pause rather than eliminate the problem - that there's much to be done about it.
That doesn't mean we can't still point and laugh at the stupidity of this idea, but are there are any concrete suggestions? If so, let's hear them.
Stopping the boats, if that's your main aim, is pretty simple. A UK asylum centre in Calais and ferry tickets to Dover.
Stopping boats without letting people in another way? Can't help you there.
Is it that simple? Will the Albanians simply give up when rejected at Calais?
Quite possibly. But it reduces the numbers of boat people, which makes it easier to catch and return those who remain.
Part of our problem at the moment is that the rate of people coming in vastly exceeds our state ability to process them.
So the UK is reduced to bloodcurdling threats that it probably can't carry out. Partly human rights law, but partly because the UK state can't reliably carry out anything. Trust me- that tends not to work.
Pitiful
Making asylum easier to claim at Calais - then giving the lucky ones tickets for the Dover Ferry - will just INCREASE the pull factor of Calais
Tens of thousands more will try. What will those that fail then do? Will they think “shit, at least the UK gave me a fair go, oh well, now I’ll head back to Albania/Somalia”
Or will they simply try and cross illegally? As before, but in even greater numbers?
You don’t have an answer which doesn’t make you extremely uncomfortable. So you would rather provide no answer at all. It’s a kind of cowardice
If you provide safe routes, then there is far less argument legally about those who choose not to use them.
Where are we going to deport them? We are incapable of deporting anyone because liberal lawyers go mad and Gary lineker calls you goebbels and everyone is pathetically spineless
And if we did start actually deporting those that failed the Calais asylum test then they’d all go back to destroying their documents and using the dinghies
It’s just another pitifuf non answer. It is pathetic
Liberal lawyers going mad or staying sane does not change the law.
If you want the policy objectives that the govt is pushing with their policy you need to be angry with the govt for not leaving the refugee convention not liberal lawyers.
I have not read the proposed Bill or much of the news regarding it so can't comment specifically on the proposed Bill.
However Australia is in the Refugee Convention and has had a similar policy before. Which was ruled legal by its domestic Courts. And the policy has worked in its objectives.
If you disagree with the policy, then that should be a matter for political debate, not legal arguments. If Parliament passes a law saying this is legal, then that should be the law, just as it was elsewhere.
You dont need my opinion, the government does not think it legal!
Has the Government put a "notwithstanding" clause in?
If so, then its legal, is it not?
Get Betfair to put a market up and happy to accommodate backers of legal.
Parliament sets the law. If Parliament says something is legal, then it is legal.
Men marrying other men wasn't legal. Parliament changed the law, now it is. That is what Parliament is for.
Have you heard of international law?
Yes. Its a bad joke.
Parliament can override international law.
It can't override it, it can legislate to make it unenforceable in the UK. The UK then lives with the consequences of that because the international law still exists. In the case of the illegal immigration legislation, though, the government is saying it is not acting contrary to international law or seeking to make it unenforceable.
We live with the consequences then, if that is what we choose to do, that is a matter for politics not lawyers.
If Parliament passes a Bill overriding international law domestically, eg by legalising cannabis which I wholeheartedly support in violation of international law, then there are no international courts that can override the UK Parliament. Nor should there be.
Or the UN Declaration on Human Rights, that asserts the rights of all human beings to live in dignity regardless of ethnic origin, or the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Or the Geneva Conventions. Do you think the sovereign body in any sovereign country ought to be able to renege on any international law it wishes to, so long as it only does so domestically? So for example the Brazilian parliament could decide to exterminate the Yanomami people and they shouldn't be held responsible before an international court if they did?
Yes I 100% think any sovereign body ought to be able to renege on any international law it wishes to do so, domestically.
If the Brazilian Parliament chose to exterminate a people then that would be a matter for international relations to resolve, not lawyers or courts. Just as China's acts of genocide against the Rohingya and others.
A genuinely robust international legal system that punishes and deters such atrocities, regardless of who commits them and where they happen, is a challenging aspiration, but it's a bit odd to say it isn't a worthwhile one.
Its not a worthwhile one, because the meaning of atrocity changes. The problem is what's good today can be awful in the future, or vice-versa/
The law should be a living, breathing, and most importantly evolving body - which is what Parliament is for.
If you go back just ten years it was illegal for two men to marry each other in Scotland. If you go back ~fifty years it was illegal for two men to love each other and could result in imprisonment. If you go back hundreds of years, it could result in execution.
You operate as if international law is "good" so should be set in stone, but the law has never been that way. Ossifying laws in stone is how you end up with the madness that is the US Second Amendment and routine mass murder in schools. Ossifying laws in stone is how you end up with gays being stoned to death.
If an international law signed in the 50s put a prohibition on same sex marriage, then I think Parliament would be well within its rights to say that notwithstanding the law we are legalising it. If an international law signed in the 18th century had a Second Amendment style ruling then following Dunblane I'd think that Parliament is perfectly entitled to say that the law needs to change.
We should seek to tackle atrocities internationally, but that needs to be done via international relations, not laws locking in the views of the past to be enforced in the future.
A robust and dynamic international legal system then. One which moves with the times as all good legal systems should. To inter alia punish and deter atrocities. As I say, most odd to not at least grant this to be a worthwhile aspiration. Still, you're you. With your reverence for the Nation State.
It is not a reverence for the Nation State, it is a reverence for democracy. Democracy is attached to the Nation State.
Our legal system evolves with the times due to Parliament, and we have routine elections to Parliament.
If you want international law to evolve with the times and not be ossified to the past saying that cannabis must be illegal/gays must be stoned/second amendment etc then without a global Parliament how do you achieve that?
And if there is a global Parliament, then haven't you just globalised all the issues you decry with the Nation State?
If a local council in a deeply conservative part of the country wished to ban homosexuality in accordance with local demand we would say to them and their voters, "Nope, sorry, not on. There's a higher law against you doing that."
IOW some things are too important to be left to the voters. It's therefore not just about democracy. It's about where is the best place in an ideal world - since I did say 'aspiration' remember - for certain fundamental human rights to be protected.
Asserting this is always and forever the nation state, ie there can never be anything so important it can't be left to voters at this level of aggregation, is illogical. It comes from, as I say, revering the nation state itself. Which is what you do, what many people do tbf, odd as it might appear to me.
A local Council is not a country, so can not deprive people of national rights. That is the nation protecting them, yes.
If a country wants to ban homosexuality it can. I would absolutely deplore that, I would be against that, I would be disgusted - but it would be able to do so and many do.
The way to prevent that is to have educated voters who would vote out any Government so repellent, not rely upon flawed and failed international institutions to do so.
Nothing is too important to be left to the voters. Only the voters protect our rights.
So not a fan of article 79 of the German constitution then?
No I'm not, I'm glad the UK doesn't have an equivalent of that.
Its worth bearing in mind that refugees can only exist precisely because nation states exist that have different standards, allowing those abused in one nation to seek refuge in another nation. The world would be in an infinitely worse place if that protection vanished.
If we had a global government and global court saying that homosexuals should be stoned to death, with the entire world in its jurisdiction so nowhere to seek refuge, would that be an improvement? Of course not.
It is thanks to the fact countries vary, that we allow people to seek refuge when a state goes too far in the wrong direction. Just because a body is international or global doesn't mean it wouldn't go too far in the wrong direction too - precedent in fact suggests it is very probable it would.
Let’s be honest, the small boats issue is a complicated and nuanced issue and most of our politicians and news media don’t deal in complexity and nuance.
The solution is an integrated approach - more money to deal with the asylum backlog, a more accessible and responsive asylum process, closer co-operation with Europe (ho-hum) and yes disincentivising the concept of trying to enter the country illegally.
Unfortunately because we are so polarised and because of the lack of complexity and nuance speaking about any one of these things in depth immediately marks you out as either a lefty loony liberal or a raving nazi. I don’t have much faith in Starmer to reset this situation but I have more than the chancers in government.
Spot on.
This is a classic Silver Bullet Fallacy issue, when the answer is to have multiple overlapping policies:
- dramatically faster processing of asylum applications: the Netherlands manages the vast majority of theirs in three months, and that means you don't have lots of people *seeking* asylum hanging around - offshore processing centers - a proper clampdown on those who employ (or profit from) illegal immigrants. - cooperation with the French to discourage small boats.
It is also worth remembering that the UK had 50% more asylum seekers arriving back in 2002 (close to 100,000) - so while the boats may have made it slightly easier, there are many ways and means for people to enter the UK and to claim asylum. The boats just make it much more visible.
Why does the government not try any of these sensible options?
We paid the french for their cooperation while we were in the EU, the numbers getting here illegally were about the same as when we paid the french for cooperation as they are now, a reasonable person might suspect that french cooperation amounted to them cooperating with taking money while doing nothing
I don't think that's true: the number of arrivals by boat is dramatically higher than it was four years ago.
Had a chat with a barrister with impeccably right wing credentials and no fan of illegal border crossings.
Says yesterday's legislation is simply the worst piece of drafted legislation he has ever seen.
Like it was focus grouped and then drafted.
He feels sorry for the GLD teams that will have to defend this shit in court.
There's a retroactive clause in the bill that must have been written by Lionel Hutz.
It isn't serious law. Braverman sends a letter to Tory MPs saying she doesn't know if the bill is legal but there is "a greater than 50% chance" it isn't.
Then we get Dishi in front of a Stop The Boats lectern. Speaking in his Jackanory voice. Quite literally telling stories to political toddlers.
They know the plan - laughable to even use that word - doesn't work practically. They know it doesn't work legally. But they also know their remaining voters don't care, they just want action. Though I don't think "blame the courts" works as an excuse any longer.
The third plan in three years and legislation so obviously designed for dividing lines rather than results is too obviously transparent to fool most voters. And making Braverman the face of it just compounds the problem. She is massively unpopular.
I really can’t see it ending well for Sunak. The people he is targeting are those most likely to buy the Farage/Reform betrayal narrative that will inevitably explode into the right-wing press this summer when the boats keep on coming.
Cooper was right yesterday: people want results, not performative gestures that won’t work.
In a serious question:
How *would* anyone stop the boats?
It doesn't seem to me, short of major military operations on the beaches of Northern France, which ain't happening, or arranging odd accidents for all the traffickers - and even that would presumably pause rather than eliminate the problem - that there's much to be done about it.
That doesn't mean we can't still point and laugh at the stupidity of this idea, but are there are any concrete suggestions? If so, let's hear them.
Stopping the boats, if that's your main aim, is pretty simple. A UK asylum centre in Calais and ferry tickets to Dover.
Stopping boats without letting people in another way? Can't help you there.
Is it that simple? Will the Albanians simply give up when rejected at Calais?
Quite possibly. But it reduces the numbers of boat people, which makes it easier to catch and return those who remain.
Part of our problem at the moment is that the rate of people coming in vastly exceeds our state ability to process them.
So the UK is reduced to bloodcurdling threats that it probably can't carry out. Partly human rights law, but partly because the UK state can't reliably carry out anything. Trust me- that tends not to work.
Pitiful
Making asylum easier to claim at Calais - then giving the lucky ones tickets for the Dover Ferry - will just INCREASE the pull factor of Calais
Tens of thousands more will try. What will those that fail then do? Will they think “shit, at least the UK gave me a fair go, oh well, now I’ll head back to Albania/Somalia”
Or will they simply try and cross illegally? As before, but in even greater numbers?
You don’t have an answer which doesn’t make you extremely uncomfortable. So you would rather provide no answer at all. It’s a kind of cowardice
If you provide safe routes, then there is far less argument legally about those who choose not to use them.
Where are we going to deport them? We are incapable of deporting anyone because liberal lawyers go mad and Gary lineker calls you goebbels and everyone is pathetically spineless
And if we did start actually deporting those that failed the Calais asylum test then they’d all go back to destroying their documents and using the dinghies
It’s just another pitifuf non answer. It is pathetic
Liberal lawyers going mad or staying sane does not change the law.
If you want the policy objectives that the govt is pushing with their policy you need to be angry with the govt for not leaving the refugee convention not liberal lawyers.
I have not read the proposed Bill or much of the news regarding it so can't comment specifically on the proposed Bill.
However Australia is in the Refugee Convention and has had a similar policy before. Which was ruled legal by its domestic Courts. And the policy has worked in its objectives.
If you disagree with the policy, then that should be a matter for political debate, not legal arguments. If Parliament passes a law saying this is legal, then that should be the law, just as it was elsewhere.
You dont need my opinion, the government does not think it legal!
Has the Government put a "notwithstanding" clause in?
If so, then its legal, is it not?
Get Betfair to put a market up and happy to accommodate backers of legal.
Parliament sets the law. If Parliament says something is legal, then it is legal.
Men marrying other men wasn't legal. Parliament changed the law, now it is. That is what Parliament is for.
Have you heard of international law?
Yes. Its a bad joke.
Parliament can override international law.
It can't override it, it can legislate to make it unenforceable in the UK. The UK then lives with the consequences of that because the international law still exists. In the case of the illegal immigration legislation, though, the government is saying it is not acting contrary to international law or seeking to make it unenforceable.
We live with the consequences then, if that is what we choose to do, that is a matter for politics not lawyers.
If Parliament passes a Bill overriding international law domestically, eg by legalising cannabis which I wholeheartedly support in violation of international law, then there are no international courts that can override the UK Parliament. Nor should there be.
Or the UN Declaration on Human Rights, that asserts the rights of all human beings to live in dignity regardless of ethnic origin, or the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Or the Geneva Conventions. Do you think the sovereign body in any sovereign country ought to be able to renege on any international law it wishes to, so long as it only does so domestically? So for example the Brazilian parliament could decide to exterminate the Yanomami people and they shouldn't be held responsible before an international court if they did?
Yes I 100% think any sovereign body ought to be able to renege on any international law it wishes to do so, domestically.
If the Brazilian Parliament chose to exterminate a people then that would be a matter for international relations to resolve, not lawyers or courts. Just as China's acts of genocide against the Rohingya and others.
A genuinely robust international legal system that punishes and deters such atrocities, regardless of who commits them and where they happen, is a challenging aspiration, but it's a bit odd to say it isn't a worthwhile one.
Its not a worthwhile one, because the meaning of atrocity changes. The problem is what's good today can be awful in the future, or vice-versa/
The law should be a living, breathing, and most importantly evolving body - which is what Parliament is for.
If you go back just ten years it was illegal for two men to marry each other in Scotland. If you go back ~fifty years it was illegal for two men to love each other and could result in imprisonment. If you go back hundreds of years, it could result in execution.
You operate as if international law is "good" so should be set in stone, but the law has never been that way. Ossifying laws in stone is how you end up with the madness that is the US Second Amendment and routine mass murder in schools. Ossifying laws in stone is how you end up with gays being stoned to death.
If an international law signed in the 50s put a prohibition on same sex marriage, then I think Parliament would be well within its rights to say that notwithstanding the law we are legalising it. If an international law signed in the 18th century had a Second Amendment style ruling then following Dunblane I'd think that Parliament is perfectly entitled to say that the law needs to change.
We should seek to tackle atrocities internationally, but that needs to be done via international relations, not laws locking in the views of the past to be enforced in the future.
A robust and dynamic international legal system then. One which moves with the times as all good legal systems should. To inter alia punish and deter atrocities. As I say, most odd to not at least grant this to be a worthwhile aspiration. Still, you're you. With your reverence for the Nation State.
It is not a reverence for the Nation State, it is a reverence for democracy. Democracy is attached to the Nation State.
Our legal system evolves with the times due to Parliament, and we have routine elections to Parliament.
If you want international law to evolve with the times and not be ossified to the past saying that cannabis must be illegal/gays must be stoned/second amendment etc then without a global Parliament how do you achieve that?
And if there is a global Parliament, then haven't you just globalised all the issues you decry with the Nation State?
If a local council in a deeply conservative part of the country wished to ban homosexuality in accordance with local demand we would say to them and their voters, "Nope, sorry, not on. There's a higher law against you doing that."
IOW some things are too important to be left to the voters. It's therefore not just about democracy. It's about where is the best place in an ideal world - since I did say 'aspiration' remember - for certain fundamental human rights to be protected.
Asserting this is always and forever the nation state, ie there can never be anything so important it can't be left to voters at this level of aggregation, is illogical. It comes from, as I say, revering the nation state itself. Which is what you do, what many people do tbf, odd as it might appear to me.
So if these things can't be left to voters....who gets to decide and where do they get their authority to decide for the rest of us?
People like you? Only if you want a lot of people picking up a gun. I wouldn't trust any small group of deciders so tough we decide as a demos or we have a dictatorship of the bien pensant and that will end in blood
Nice. Bigotry backed up by the blatant threat of violence. Legalise queerbashing or the people will arm themselves?
Where did I say legalise queer bashing...clue I didn't . I commented on "somethings are too important to be left to voters" , looking for a bigotted comment that is one
Sorry if I misinterpreted the subtlety of your position. On closer inspection you are defending only "banning homosexuality" at the point of a gun. Though I still don't really see how you would be able eliminate homosexuality without killing all the homosexuals. Or perhaps deporting them to Rwanda. So sorry if I was unfair.
For christ sake I didn't opine on homosexuality ...
You were presented with the example of a local council wanting to "ban homosexuality" in accordance with local demand, and you said it shouldn't be prevented unless he wanted "a lot of people picking up a gun", and you said that if it were presented it would "end in blood".
Let’s be honest, the small boats issue is a complicated and nuanced issue and most of our politicians and news media don’t deal in complexity and nuance.
The solution is an integrated approach - more money to deal with the asylum backlog, a more accessible and responsive asylum process, closer co-operation with Europe (ho-hum) and yes disincentivising the concept of trying to enter the country illegally.
Unfortunately because we are so polarised and because of the lack of complexity and nuance speaking about any one of these things in depth immediately marks you out as either a lefty loony liberal or a raving nazi. I don’t have much faith in Starmer to reset this situation but I have more than the chancers in government.
Spot on.
This is a classic Silver Bullet Fallacy issue, when the answer is to have multiple overlapping policies:
- dramatically faster processing of asylum applications: the Netherlands manages the vast majority of theirs in three months, and that means you don't have lots of people *seeking* asylum hanging around - offshore processing centers - a proper clampdown on those who employ (or profit from) illegal immigrants. - cooperation with the French to discourage small boats.
It is also worth remembering that the UK had 50% more asylum seekers arriving back in 2002 (close to 100,000) - so while the boats may have made it slightly easier, there are many ways and means for people to enter the UK and to claim asylum. The boats just make it much more visible.
Why does the government not try any of these sensible options?
We paid the french for their cooperation while we were in the EU, the numbers getting here illegally were about the same as when we paid the french for cooperation as they are now, a reasonable person might suspect that french cooperation amounted to them cooperating with taking money while doing nothing
I don't think that's true: the number of arrivals by boat is dramatically higher than it was four years ago.
I was referring to those entering the country illegally from france regardless of the mode of transport, you yourself pointed out it was about 100,000 in 2002 and its the about the same now just the route changed from back of a lorry to boats
100k was asylum applications, most of which were accepted, nothing illegal about them. In the days of information at our finger tips in a flash, it is amazing how passionate people can be about a subject yet cannot be bothered to get facts correct to within an order of magnitude.
Had a chat with a barrister with impeccably right wing credentials and no fan of illegal border crossings.
Says yesterday's legislation is simply the worst piece of drafted legislation he has ever seen.
Like it was focus grouped and then drafted.
He feels sorry for the GLD teams that will have to defend this shit in court.
There's a retroactive clause in the bill that must have been written by Lionel Hutz.
It isn't serious law. Braverman sends a letter to Tory MPs saying she doesn't know if the bill is legal but there is "a greater than 50% chance" it isn't.
Then we get Dishi in front of a Stop The Boats lectern. Speaking in his Jackanory voice. Quite literally telling stories to political toddlers.
They know the plan - laughable to even use that word - doesn't work practically. They know it doesn't work legally. But they also know their remaining voters don't care, they just want action. Though I don't think "blame the courts" works as an excuse any longer.
The third plan in three years and legislation so obviously designed for dividing lines rather than results is too obviously transparent to fool most voters. And making Braverman the face of it just compounds the problem. She is massively unpopular.
I really can’t see it ending well for Sunak. The people he is targeting are those most likely to buy the Farage/Reform betrayal narrative that will inevitably explode into the right-wing press this summer when the boats keep on coming.
Cooper was right yesterday: people want results, not performative gestures that won’t work.
In a serious question:
How *would* anyone stop the boats?
It doesn't seem to me, short of major military operations on the beaches of Northern France, which ain't happening, or arranging odd accidents for all the traffickers - and even that would presumably pause rather than eliminate the problem - that there's much to be done about it.
That doesn't mean we can't still point and laugh at the stupidity of this idea, but are there are any concrete suggestions? If so, let's hear them.
Stopping the boats, if that's your main aim, is pretty simple. A UK asylum centre in Calais and ferry tickets to Dover.
Stopping boats without letting people in another way? Can't help you there.
Is it that simple? Will the Albanians simply give up when rejected at Calais?
Quite possibly. But it reduces the numbers of boat people, which makes it easier to catch and return those who remain.
Part of our problem at the moment is that the rate of people coming in vastly exceeds our state ability to process them.
So the UK is reduced to bloodcurdling threats that it probably can't carry out. Partly human rights law, but partly because the UK state can't reliably carry out anything. Trust me- that tends not to work.
Pitiful
Making asylum easier to claim at Calais - then giving the lucky ones tickets for the Dover Ferry - will just INCREASE the pull factor of Calais
Tens of thousands more will try. What will those that fail then do? Will they think “shit, at least the UK gave me a fair go, oh well, now I’ll head back to Albania/Somalia”
Or will they simply try and cross illegally? As before, but in even greater numbers?
You don’t have an answer which doesn’t make you extremely uncomfortable. So you would rather provide no answer at all. It’s a kind of cowardice
If you provide safe routes, then there is far less argument legally about those who choose not to use them.
Where are we going to deport them? We are incapable of deporting anyone because liberal lawyers go mad and Gary lineker calls you goebbels and everyone is pathetically spineless
And if we did start actually deporting those that failed the Calais asylum test then they’d all go back to destroying their documents and using the dinghies
It’s just another pitifuf non answer. It is pathetic
Liberal lawyers going mad or staying sane does not change the law.
If you want the policy objectives that the govt is pushing with their policy you need to be angry with the govt for not leaving the refugee convention not liberal lawyers.
I have not read the proposed Bill or much of the news regarding it so can't comment specifically on the proposed Bill.
However Australia is in the Refugee Convention and has had a similar policy before. Which was ruled legal by its domestic Courts. And the policy has worked in its objectives.
If you disagree with the policy, then that should be a matter for political debate, not legal arguments. If Parliament passes a law saying this is legal, then that should be the law, just as it was elsewhere.
You dont need my opinion, the government does not think it legal!
Has the Government put a "notwithstanding" clause in?
If so, then its legal, is it not?
Get Betfair to put a market up and happy to accommodate backers of legal.
Parliament sets the law. If Parliament says something is legal, then it is legal.
Men marrying other men wasn't legal. Parliament changed the law, now it is. That is what Parliament is for.
Have you heard of international law?
Yes. Its a bad joke.
Parliament can override international law.
It can't override it, it can legislate to make it unenforceable in the UK. The UK then lives with the consequences of that because the international law still exists. In the case of the illegal immigration legislation, though, the government is saying it is not acting contrary to international law or seeking to make it unenforceable.
We live with the consequences then, if that is what we choose to do, that is a matter for politics not lawyers.
If Parliament passes a Bill overriding international law domestically, eg by legalising cannabis which I wholeheartedly support in violation of international law, then there are no international courts that can override the UK Parliament. Nor should there be.
Or the UN Declaration on Human Rights, that asserts the rights of all human beings to live in dignity regardless of ethnic origin, or the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Or the Geneva Conventions. Do you think the sovereign body in any sovereign country ought to be able to renege on any international law it wishes to, so long as it only does so domestically? So for example the Brazilian parliament could decide to exterminate the Yanomami people and they shouldn't be held responsible before an international court if they did?
Yes I 100% think any sovereign body ought to be able to renege on any international law it wishes to do so, domestically.
If the Brazilian Parliament chose to exterminate a people then that would be a matter for international relations to resolve, not lawyers or courts. Just as China's acts of genocide against the Rohingya and others.
A genuinely robust international legal system that punishes and deters such atrocities, regardless of who commits them and where they happen, is a challenging aspiration, but it's a bit odd to say it isn't a worthwhile one.
Its not a worthwhile one, because the meaning of atrocity changes. The problem is what's good today can be awful in the future, or vice-versa/
The law should be a living, breathing, and most importantly evolving body - which is what Parliament is for.
If you go back just ten years it was illegal for two men to marry each other in Scotland. If you go back ~fifty years it was illegal for two men to love each other and could result in imprisonment. If you go back hundreds of years, it could result in execution.
You operate as if international law is "good" so should be set in stone, but the law has never been that way. Ossifying laws in stone is how you end up with the madness that is the US Second Amendment and routine mass murder in schools. Ossifying laws in stone is how you end up with gays being stoned to death.
If an international law signed in the 50s put a prohibition on same sex marriage, then I think Parliament would be well within its rights to say that notwithstanding the law we are legalising it. If an international law signed in the 18th century had a Second Amendment style ruling then following Dunblane I'd think that Parliament is perfectly entitled to say that the law needs to change.
We should seek to tackle atrocities internationally, but that needs to be done via international relations, not laws locking in the views of the past to be enforced in the future.
A robust and dynamic international legal system then. One which moves with the times as all good legal systems should. To inter alia punish and deter atrocities. As I say, most odd to not at least grant this to be a worthwhile aspiration. Still, you're you. With your reverence for the Nation State.
It is not a reverence for the Nation State, it is a reverence for democracy. Democracy is attached to the Nation State.
Our legal system evolves with the times due to Parliament, and we have routine elections to Parliament.
If you want international law to evolve with the times and not be ossified to the past saying that cannabis must be illegal/gays must be stoned/second amendment etc then without a global Parliament how do you achieve that?
And if there is a global Parliament, then haven't you just globalised all the issues you decry with the Nation State?
If a local council in a deeply conservative part of the country wished to ban homosexuality in accordance with local demand we would say to them and their voters, "Nope, sorry, not on. There's a higher law against you doing that."
IOW some things are too important to be left to the voters. It's therefore not just about democracy. It's about where is the best place in an ideal world - since I did say 'aspiration' remember - for certain fundamental human rights to be protected.
Asserting this is always and forever the nation state, ie there can never be anything so important it can't be left to voters at this level of aggregation, is illogical. It comes from, as I say, revering the nation state itself. Which is what you do, what many people do tbf, odd as it might appear to me.
So if these things can't be left to voters....who gets to decide and where do they get their authority to decide for the rest of us?
People like you? Only if you want a lot of people picking up a gun. I wouldn't trust any small group of deciders so tough we decide as a demos or we have a dictatorship of the bien pensant and that will end in blood
Not PURELY to voters. Eg it should be much much harder to pass laws violating basic human rights than to cut taxes. And then the question is: so at what level should human rights be legally protected? Local? National? International?
I'm saying the level should be as high as possible. Why assert as some belief set in stone that it should go no higher than the nation state as if the nation state is something sacred? That makes little sense to me.
National.
If it is national then if it is violated in one nation you can seek refuge in another nation. If it is international then if it is violated internationally, where do you seek refuge?
If an international court and international government ruled that homosexuals internationally must be stoned to death, then where do you seek refuge? Where do you go? What do you do?
You may think that's unlikely, but its no more unlikely than that Parliament would do so.
Had a chat with a barrister with impeccably right wing credentials and no fan of illegal border crossings.
Says yesterday's legislation is simply the worst piece of drafted legislation he has ever seen.
Like it was focus grouped and then drafted.
He feels sorry for the GLD teams that will have to defend this shit in court.
There's a retroactive clause in the bill that must have been written by Lionel Hutz.
It isn't serious law. Braverman sends a letter to Tory MPs saying she doesn't know if the bill is legal but there is "a greater than 50% chance" it isn't.
Then we get Dishi in front of a Stop The Boats lectern. Speaking in his Jackanory voice. Quite literally telling stories to political toddlers.
They know the plan - laughable to even use that word - doesn't work practically. They know it doesn't work legally. But they also know their remaining voters don't care, they just want action. Though I don't think "blame the courts" works as an excuse any longer.
The third plan in three years and legislation so obviously designed for dividing lines rather than results is too obviously transparent to fool most voters. And making Braverman the face of it just compounds the problem. She is massively unpopular.
I really can’t see it ending well for Sunak. The people he is targeting are those most likely to buy the Farage/Reform betrayal narrative that will inevitably explode into the right-wing press this summer when the boats keep on coming.
Cooper was right yesterday: people want results, not performative gestures that won’t work.
In a serious question:
How *would* anyone stop the boats?
It doesn't seem to me, short of major military operations on the beaches of Northern France, which ain't happening, or arranging odd accidents for all the traffickers - and even that would presumably pause rather than eliminate the problem - that there's much to be done about it.
That doesn't mean we can't still point and laugh at the stupidity of this idea, but are there are any concrete suggestions? If so, let's hear them.
Stopping the boats, if that's your main aim, is pretty simple. A UK asylum centre in Calais and ferry tickets to Dover.
Stopping boats without letting people in another way? Can't help you there.
Is it that simple? Will the Albanians simply give up when rejected at Calais?
Quite possibly. But it reduces the numbers of boat people, which makes it easier to catch and return those who remain.
Part of our problem at the moment is that the rate of people coming in vastly exceeds our state ability to process them.
So the UK is reduced to bloodcurdling threats that it probably can't carry out. Partly human rights law, but partly because the UK state can't reliably carry out anything. Trust me- that tends not to work.
Pitiful
Making asylum easier to claim at Calais - then giving the lucky ones tickets for the Dover Ferry - will just INCREASE the pull factor of Calais
Tens of thousands more will try. What will those that fail then do? Will they think “shit, at least the UK gave me a fair go, oh well, now I’ll head back to Albania/Somalia”
Or will they simply try and cross illegally? As before, but in even greater numbers?
You don’t have an answer which doesn’t make you extremely uncomfortable. So you would rather provide no answer at all. It’s a kind of cowardice
If you provide safe routes, then there is far less argument legally about those who choose not to use them.
Where are we going to deport them? We are incapable of deporting anyone because liberal lawyers go mad and Gary lineker calls you goebbels and everyone is pathetically spineless
And if we did start actually deporting those that failed the Calais asylum test then they’d all go back to destroying their documents and using the dinghies
It’s just another pitifuf non answer. It is pathetic
Liberal lawyers going mad or staying sane does not change the law.
If you want the policy objectives that the govt is pushing with their policy you need to be angry with the govt for not leaving the refugee convention not liberal lawyers.
I have not read the proposed Bill or much of the news regarding it so can't comment specifically on the proposed Bill.
However Australia is in the Refugee Convention and has had a similar policy before. Which was ruled legal by its domestic Courts. And the policy has worked in its objectives.
If you disagree with the policy, then that should be a matter for political debate, not legal arguments. If Parliament passes a law saying this is legal, then that should be the law, just as it was elsewhere.
You dont need my opinion, the government does not think it legal!
Has the Government put a "notwithstanding" clause in?
If so, then its legal, is it not?
Get Betfair to put a market up and happy to accommodate backers of legal.
Parliament sets the law. If Parliament says something is legal, then it is legal.
Men marrying other men wasn't legal. Parliament changed the law, now it is. That is what Parliament is for.
Have you heard of international law?
Yes. Its a bad joke.
Parliament can override international law.
It can't override it, it can legislate to make it unenforceable in the UK. The UK then lives with the consequences of that because the international law still exists. In the case of the illegal immigration legislation, though, the government is saying it is not acting contrary to international law or seeking to make it unenforceable.
We live with the consequences then, if that is what we choose to do, that is a matter for politics not lawyers.
If Parliament passes a Bill overriding international law domestically, eg by legalising cannabis which I wholeheartedly support in violation of international law, then there are no international courts that can override the UK Parliament. Nor should there be.
Or the UN Declaration on Human Rights, that asserts the rights of all human beings to live in dignity regardless of ethnic origin, or the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Or the Geneva Conventions. Do you think the sovereign body in any sovereign country ought to be able to renege on any international law it wishes to, so long as it only does so domestically? So for example the Brazilian parliament could decide to exterminate the Yanomami people and they shouldn't be held responsible before an international court if they did?
Yes I 100% think any sovereign body ought to be able to renege on any international law it wishes to do so, domestically.
If the Brazilian Parliament chose to exterminate a people then that would be a matter for international relations to resolve, not lawyers or courts. Just as China's acts of genocide against the Rohingya and others.
A genuinely robust international legal system that punishes and deters such atrocities, regardless of who commits them and where they happen, is a challenging aspiration, but it's a bit odd to say it isn't a worthwhile one.
Its not a worthwhile one, because the meaning of atrocity changes. The problem is what's good today can be awful in the future, or vice-versa/
The law should be a living, breathing, and most importantly evolving body - which is what Parliament is for.
If you go back just ten years it was illegal for two men to marry each other in Scotland. If you go back ~fifty years it was illegal for two men to love each other and could result in imprisonment. If you go back hundreds of years, it could result in execution.
You operate as if international law is "good" so should be set in stone, but the law has never been that way. Ossifying laws in stone is how you end up with the madness that is the US Second Amendment and routine mass murder in schools. Ossifying laws in stone is how you end up with gays being stoned to death.
If an international law signed in the 50s put a prohibition on same sex marriage, then I think Parliament would be well within its rights to say that notwithstanding the law we are legalising it. If an international law signed in the 18th century had a Second Amendment style ruling then following Dunblane I'd think that Parliament is perfectly entitled to say that the law needs to change.
We should seek to tackle atrocities internationally, but that needs to be done via international relations, not laws locking in the views of the past to be enforced in the future.
A robust and dynamic international legal system then. One which moves with the times as all good legal systems should. To inter alia punish and deter atrocities. As I say, most odd to not at least grant this to be a worthwhile aspiration. Still, you're you. With your reverence for the Nation State.
It is not a reverence for the Nation State, it is a reverence for democracy. Democracy is attached to the Nation State.
Our legal system evolves with the times due to Parliament, and we have routine elections to Parliament.
If you want international law to evolve with the times and not be ossified to the past saying that cannabis must be illegal/gays must be stoned/second amendment etc then without a global Parliament how do you achieve that?
And if there is a global Parliament, then haven't you just globalised all the issues you decry with the Nation State?
If a local council in a deeply conservative part of the country wished to ban homosexuality in accordance with local demand we would say to them and their voters, "Nope, sorry, not on. There's a higher law against you doing that."
IOW some things are too important to be left to the voters. It's therefore not just about democracy. It's about where is the best place in an ideal world - since I did say 'aspiration' remember - for certain fundamental human rights to be protected.
Asserting this is always and forever the nation state, ie there can never be anything so important it can't be left to voters at this level of aggregation, is illogical. It comes from, as I say, revering the nation state itself. Which is what you do, what many people do tbf, odd as it might appear to me.
A local Council is not a country, so can not deprive people of national rights. That is the nation protecting them, yes.
If a country wants to ban homosexuality it can. I would absolutely deplore that, I would be against that, I would be disgusted - but it would be able to do so and many do.
The way to prevent that is to have educated voters who would vote out any Government so repellent, not rely upon flawed and failed international institutions to do so.
Nothing is too important to be left to the voters. Only the voters protect our rights.
So not a fan of article 79 of the German constitution then?
No I'm not, I'm glad the UK doesn't have an equivalent of that.
Its worth bearing in mind that refugees can only exist precisely because nation states exist that have different standards, allowing those abused in one nation to seek refuge in another nation. The world would be in an infinitely worse place if that protection vanished.
If we had a global government and global court saying that homosexuals should be stoned to death, with the entire world in its jurisdiction so nowhere to seek refuge, would that be an improvement? Of course not.
It is thanks to the fact countries vary, that we allow people to seek refuge when a state goes too far in the wrong direction. Just because a body is international or global doesn't mean it wouldn't go too far in the wrong direction too - precedent in fact suggests it is very probable it would.
Indeed given the number of muslims, evangelical christians and catholics in the world probably add up to a good proportion of voters a world government is far more likely to outlaw abortion, homosexuality, contraception etc than to be a secular liberal type of world.
Hell there are 7 eu nations that don't regard marital rape as a crime
Let’s be honest, the small boats issue is a complicated and nuanced issue and most of our politicians and news media don’t deal in complexity and nuance.
The solution is an integrated approach - more money to deal with the asylum backlog, a more accessible and responsive asylum process, closer co-operation with Europe (ho-hum) and yes disincentivising the concept of trying to enter the country illegally.
Unfortunately because we are so polarised and because of the lack of complexity and nuance speaking about any one of these things in depth immediately marks you out as either a lefty loony liberal or a raving nazi. I don’t have much faith in Starmer to reset this situation but I have more than the chancers in government.
Spot on.
This is a classic Silver Bullet Fallacy issue, when the answer is to have multiple overlapping policies:
- dramatically faster processing of asylum applications: the Netherlands manages the vast majority of theirs in three months, and that means you don't have lots of people *seeking* asylum hanging around - offshore processing centers - a proper clampdown on those who employ (or profit from) illegal immigrants. - cooperation with the French to discourage small boats.
It is also worth remembering that the UK had 50% more asylum seekers arriving back in 2002 (close to 100,000) - so while the boats may have made it slightly easier, there are many ways and means for people to enter the UK and to claim asylum. The boats just make it much more visible.
Why does the government not try any of these sensible options?
We paid the french for their cooperation while we were in the EU, the numbers getting here illegally were about the same as when we paid the french for cooperation as they are now, a reasonable person might suspect that french cooperation amounted to them cooperating with taking money while doing nothing
I don't think that's true: the number of arrivals by boat is dramatically higher than it was four years ago.
Surely patriotic Brexiteers should be proud that people all over the world want to live in Brexit UK rather than the failed EU state of France.
Indeed. I am not sure if it is the black blue passport or the new GHIC cards with two flags on which is the bigger draw but you can see why really want those.
Comments
DISGUSTING!
Russian women's coach Pavel Rakov gives Russian women advice on how to get their men into drafting offices and what to do if they are killed in the war.
https://twitter.com/saintjavelin/status/1633449554090553352
I am more interested in where and when it is going to end than where it started
You are correct though about things starting under Blair.
NHS Foundation Trusts and School Academies both led to privatisation since accelerated of health and education
I looked at the article about the Ripon one and it looked suspect but it always will be whatever criteria you make for identifying who can vote if it is not every voter in the catchment area. The criteria used otherwise is always going to be criticised as biased by whoever loses. The Ripon ballot was not 'all' local people and that is the issue.
We are a representative democracy so I think the decision should be made at Government level. Whether that is National or Local Government I don't know.
My apologies again for getting heated.
And ending their war early, as in 1917.
They are hoping to pull the same trick in 2024, as only 'traitors' would oppose the asylum policies advocated by true patriotic 'Brits'. And it's working with some on here.
The debasement of a complex debate and the de-humanising of refugees makes me want to throw up.
Net satisfaction with Starmer as Lab leader is -12
Satisfied: 34% (-3)
Dissatisfied: 46% (+6)
So that's a no to all the extreme proposals there.
Its worth noting that like all extremists do, some of the other proposals are what the Americans would call "motherhood and Apple Pie" stuff and that is what has been done.
Extremists love to put a bunch of nice and reasonable sounding slogans in, with their hateful and extreme ones mixed in. That way the hateful and extreme ones get read alongside people nodding along and thinking "yes combatting unemployment is a good idea" and the other ideas sound more reasonable in that context too.
Unfortunately what's more worthy of criticism is that this Conservative Government hasn't achieved the sensible proposals either. "Encourage free enterprise" - not with Hunt and Sunak's tax rises they haven't!
If I had this in a totally fashionable london resto id be raving at the genius. It’s £2 in Hoi An
a. Introduce the category of "slave" in this country. These are people who have no rights whatsoever, and therefore lawyers cannot be brought in to defend them.
b. Enact that all people who are in this country illegally are deemed to be slaves. They do not even have any rights to property, so all their possessions can be confiscated.
c. And people who introduce slaves into this country are worthy of capital punishment. And we just have to execute (in public, of course, for the sake of publicity) one or two and the word would soon get around.
I feel that such policies would appeal to the bulk of the Conservative electorate, and would soon re-establish the Conservative Party as front runners.
It might be argued that this proposal would introduce three categories of people, who would receive differential treatment. I accept this argument.
However, at present we do have two categories of people: those to whom the law applies (most of us), and those who think they are above the law and behave accordingly. As evidence of the second category, I offer you various members of the government, past and present.
How would these suggestions go down with true Conservatives (tm), Young HY?
Suella De Vil
Suella De Vil
If she doesn't scare you
No evil thing will…
If they could get here, they would. The only constraints are (a) personal endurance/resilience of the individuals (b) the market price of the people smuggler's passage and (c) the capacity of that industry to transport them.
IOW some things are too important to be left to the voters. It's therefore not just about democracy. It's about where is the best place in an ideal world - since I did say 'aspiration' remember - for certain fundamental human rights to be protected.
Asserting this is always and forever the nation state, ie there can never be anything so important it can't be left to voters at this level of aggregation, is illogical. It comes from, as I say, revering the nation state itself. Which is what you do, what many people do tbf, odd as it might appear to me.
The French president is demanding a multi-year settlement to put “boots on the ground” on the beaches of northern France.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/macron-payments-france-uk-small-boats-crisis-2023-wxmt98zjb
This is a classic Silver Bullet Fallacy issue, when the answer is to have multiple overlapping policies:
- dramatically faster processing of asylum applications: the Netherlands manages the vast majority of theirs in three months, and that means you don't have lots of people *seeking* asylum hanging around
- offshore processing centers
- a proper clampdown on those who employ (or profit from) illegal immigrants.
- cooperation with the French to discourage small boats.
It is also worth remembering that the UK had 50% more asylum seekers arriving back in 2002 (close to 100,000) - so while the boats may have made it slightly easier, there are many ways and means for people to enter the UK and to claim asylum. The boats just make it much more visible.
It's peak Godwin on here this afternoon but, if Godwin is going to be played, it should be with an eye to what may happen in 5-15 years if nothing is done about this.
The answer to global migration flows is for everyone to get richer.
People like you? Only if you want a lot of people picking up a gun. I wouldn't trust any small group of deciders so tough we decide as a demos or we have a dictatorship of the bien pensant and that will end in blood
But remember those Albanians, it's trivial for them to get into the country. They were staffing those car washes five years ago, before there were any significant number of boat arrivals.
A UK tourist visa costs virtually nothing. You get a Megabus and you tell the nice immigration officer that you're coming to the UK for your cousin's wedding, and no way are you planning on working.
If a country wants to ban homosexuality it can. I would absolutely deplore that, I would be against that, I would be disgusted - but it would be able to do so and many do.
The way to prevent that is to have educated voters who would vote out any Government so repellent, not rely upon flawed and failed international institutions to do so.
Nothing is too important to be left to the voters. Only the voters protect our rights.
I have not criticised her gender or her race, my concern is her morality and her attitude. Attacks on Civil Servants, lefty Lawyers and the Labour Party, when she realises there might be violent repercussions is to say the least not nice. A Home Secretary who advocates that violent demonstrators who set fire to police cars outside asylum hostels should carry on regardless, is not expected from a HS.
Sunak has joined in, painting Starmer as a "lefty lawyer", which is worrying.
There are more very scary people on PB than I had realised. You're welcome.
That really hurt more than being called the p word.
Just because I've worked in banking and financial services for nearly 12 years doesn't make me a banker.
When I pointed out that even the Home Secretary seems to be acknowledging that might itself involve Breaking the Law, I was told we should be able to do it anyway, because Something Needed Doing.
I conclude there are some people who think it's fine to break the law, and even use law-breaking on other people's part to justify that. Depressing. But the silver lining is that the person I spoke to Doesn't Vote.
Although, I would suspect they probably *save* money in the medium term.
People making decisions the voters have no say in is the first step to dictatorship
A dictatorship leads to people objecting violently because its the only way to get a say
Amusingly my political views haven't shifted.
Curious that @GaryLineker was free to raise questions about Qatar’s human rights record - with the blessing of the bbc - over the World Cup , but cannot raise questions of human rights in this country if it involves criticism of government policy …
—
This is an excellent point by Emily. It illustrates the key schism in the current debate over political morality.
Is our countries border also the border of our collective morality?
What do PBers think?
Drama as Home Sec disowns email sent by CCHQ blaming civil servants for going slow on small boats.
Sources says Perm Sec Matthew Rycroft went “shouty crackers” about it last night.
https://twitter.com/MrHarryCole/status/1633463757375688706
Which country has the best national dish?
We’ve done flag: UK
We’ve done anthem: Russia (Wales and France close behind)
We’ve done capital: a London/Paris tie
We’ve done loads
But best national dish?
I’m going for Vietnamese pho. Almost always delicious. Never had a bad one. Healthy and involving
I guess Italy has pizza which can be really good but it’s never great. Fish and chips are a bit meh, ok
Paella? Hamburger? Bratwurst? Pad Thai?
Nothing quite matches pho. But I am happy to be corrected
You know, a very smart guy did a video on this issue... https://youtu.be/NG4NCHuvCC4
https://twitter.com/keiranpedley/status/1633115620001689601
In a democracy, the voters have been told they can do what they like.
Constitutionalism was going really well (not really) for the Senatorial Class in Rome. Right up until the Roman people used the senate House itself as a funeral pyre for Clodius.
The answer is that you can’t control The People with The Law. The Law can act as a speed brake, but any attempt to put something’s beyond the reach of the Head Count is ultimately futile.
Please don't hit the Off Topic button.
I'm saying the level should be as high as possible. Why assert as some belief set in stone that it should go no higher than the nation state as if the nation state is something sacred? That makes little sense to me.
2018 764
2019 1,900
2020 8,404
2021 28,526
2022 45,756
By contrast, the 46% is all @bigjohnowls who is so incensed that he's managed to vote over three millions times.
Why should politicians in the U.K. think that politicians in France would inconvenience French voters to make U.K. people happy? They assumed that the U.K. politicians were paying for theatre, not actual action.
Its worth bearing in mind that refugees can only exist precisely because nation states exist that have different standards, allowing those abused in one nation to seek refuge in another nation. The world would be in an infinitely worse place if that protection vanished.
If we had a global government and global court saying that homosexuals should be stoned to death, with the entire world in its jurisdiction so nowhere to seek refuge, would that be an improvement? Of course not.
It is thanks to the fact countries vary, that we allow people to seek refuge when a state goes too far in the wrong direction. Just because a body is international or global doesn't mean it wouldn't go too far in the wrong direction too - precedent in fact suggests it is very probable it would.
Look at yourself.
I take it...
If it is national then if it is violated in one nation you can seek refuge in another nation.
If it is international then if it is violated internationally, where do you seek refuge?
If an international court and international government ruled that homosexuals internationally must be stoned to death, then where do you seek refuge? Where do you go? What do you do?
You may think that's unlikely, but its no more unlikely than that Parliament would do so.
Hell there are 7 eu nations that don't regard marital rape as a crime
I presume you are being meta. I think all these buttons are a bad invention by Messrs Zuckenburg