politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » The consequences of Amber Rudd’s decision to ignore the courts

Because of Boris Johnson’s behaviour there’s one story that hasn’t received the attention it deserves and that is the story of Amber Rudd being held in contempt of court, last Thursday The Guardian reported
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Am I alone in wondering about Ms Rudd? She seems to have risen without trace, bereft of any noteworthy achievement, and with a somewhat chequered business past.
She appears to have cornered the moderate Tory role on the basis of well, not much.
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It is OK - I was assured here on PB (a few days ago) that there will be NO Henry VIII powers and the govt will not be sidelining Parliament and converting the PM into virtually an El Presidente type figure with sweeping powers. You understand - the sort of role that a self-entitled, underachieving populist might want to pander to their ego....
In the meantime it applies to everyone including Cabinet Ministers.
But that's the point - you don't get to pick and choose which laws to obey.
It was last Tuesday evening that it crossed the line into unlawfulness. At 9.53pm that night, the lawyers were notified that Mr Justice Morris had granted an injunction ordering the Home Office to take Samim off the flight to Kabul and to return him to London. The Home Office was told of the injunction immediately and had a copy of the order at 10pm that evening. At that point Samim was in transit. The plane had landed at Istanbul, and was due to take off on a connecting flight at 10.30pm for Kabul. The Home Office decided not to remove him from the plane, and Samim was flown on to Kabul.
So, in the half-hour immediately after a copy of the injunction reached the Home Office, it didn't manage to get someone taken off a plane which at the time was in Istanbul.
Now, I don't know what your expectations of Home Office efficiency are, but I'd say that even with the very best will in the world, and even with exemplary cooperation from the Turkish authorities, there wasn't a snow flake's chance in hell of them being to intervene that quickly at ten o'clock at night in an airport in a foreign country.
I agree with the central premise of the thread.
But, there's something which has been overlooked. Faith in the system is lower than it should be because of recent actions, and inactions. The 'cultural sensitivities' bullshit led to nothing happening for over a decade when nearly one and a half thousand WWC boys and girls were sexually assaulted in Rotherham. There have been more successful prosecutions for 'bacon hate crime' than FGM, despite tens of thousands of the latter being 'detected' in a year alone.
Public sympathy with the judicial system and the police/law generally is, sadly, not at high levels. Partly because of that, and partly because May won't (or can't) fiddle with her Cabinet too much, I think Rudd is safer than she should be.
There's "ignorance", and there's hard Brexit ignorance...
For example, some of HMRC's computer systems date back to 1973 and were designed on ICL kit. These days the old ICL VME software is maintained by Fujitsu and they intend to cut off support for it in 2020.
HMRC has 1,100 people maintaining 23 systems running on legacy kit. Go read the NAO's report about Managing Legacy ICT
It's almost always more likely to be a cock up than a conspiracy.
In Istanbul they would have rung to confirm that it was still legal.
*If it was someone other than G4S the same procedures apply.
People like you and Hannan are the tip of iceberg; highly visible, but 10% of the total. I would not consider a situation where people in 30ish European countries have freedom of movement to Britain forever to be a meaningful implementation of the Brexit vote.
Hard Brexit should be the destination. If the government had planned for that from the very outset, before we triggered Article 50, we would have a chance of being in ready in time. I fear that the government's promises mean that we must end up with hard Brexit, but by not setting this goal at the beginning, and making adequate preparations, we are courting disaster.
Rudd has showed a stunning disregard for the law. When asked about the case on The Andrew Marr Show, there was not a hint of explanation or apology.
According to the BBC:
Ms Rudd told the Andrew Marr Show: "I will make sure we do the right thing."
She added that she took the matter "very seriously" and "I will look carefully at the information and make sure we abide by the law as we always do".
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-kent-41298676
So a pledge to abide by the law is a stunning disregard for the law.
The gentleman has been brought back to the UK, in accordance with the court order. I think we can safely file this one under 'unwarranted party-political attacks'.
Like the rule of thumb that for every known accident there are ten incidents (which may not be noticed) and for every ten incidents there are a hundred potentially hazardous events (virtually none of which are noticed), I wonder how many such circumstances have occurred without being highlighted by the media and/or resolved according to the rule of law.
That's a fucking tragedy.
What may happen is that business plans for the worst, but government doesn't, leaving us in a far worse position than if we had planned for Hard Brexit from the beginning.
Unfortunately, this would probably have required a PM committed to Hard Brexit who was prepared to decapitate and replace the leadership of the FCO, who are not institutionally capable of supporting Brexit.
We are making a revolution with conservatives at the top. Sounds like the Provisional Government to me...
http://i3.mirror.co.uk/incoming/article10564824.ece/ALTERNATES/s1200/MAIN-Theresa-May.jpg
I might have been wrong if the government (and especially the leavers within the government) had been competent. But sadly competence seems to be in short supply in politics atm.
Before anyone pipes up to say we already have the right to deport people after 3 months, it is vastly more expensive to find people and deport them than keeping them from entering the UK in the first place.
"Despite the absolute clarity of both orders, the Home Office again refused to obey. A third judge, Mrs Justice Lang, last Thursday, dismissed any attempt to vary the order and ordered the immediate return of Samim. She also made clear that immediate obedience was required.
Still the Home Office thought it knew best. It did nothing, and on Saturday it went to the court of appeal. It said all the orders were wrong. The appeal court gave it short shrift, and finally, the Home Office made arrangements for Samim to be flown back to the UK where he eventually arrived on Sunday night."
It's verging on bonkers to see some big scandal here, frankly.
They are at perfect liberty to appeal - but they had been told that this was not an excuse to avoid bringing him back in the meantime. Nevertheless they ignored the Court.
Government ignoring Court orders three time is a scandal.
By the by putting a man's life in danger...
How can they be certain they will be able to get the person back to this country if the judgement makes it necessary?
What would have happened if the person had been arrested or killed before being returned to this country?
Good afternoon, everyone.
If they'd done nothing, and weeks passed with the guy still in Kabul, then you might have a point. Instead they got him back here by Sunday evening. Given the normal bureaucratic delays in doing anything, that's actually pretty good.
Early on the previous thread you spoke of Mr Corbyn's Britain as a 'smoking ruin'. Whilst I've been hiding behind the sofa I've been coming to terms with that possibility (IMHO, inevitability).
I don't want to derail this thread, but it seems to me that, whilst many things I value would be destroyed, it would at least effect a radical clearance of many things that are past their use-by date. I think the re-building would give us something worthwhile & fit for the future.
Blog : "Brexit Fear"
Wibble.
A bad Labour leader would be one thing. Corbyn's taken the side of this country's enemies on numerous occasions and praised the economic approach of Venezuela. He's soft on drone-striking terrorists and happy to march with Stalin banners, a unilateralist and a damned fool.
Hopefully we won't have to find out whether I'm unnecessarily pessimistic or you're overly optimistic.
Historically, some leaders are bad enough to massively compromise a nation for decades, or centuries (the Angeli dynasty stand out).
Although there are several flights a day from Kabul to European destinations, there is a further problem about returning Bigzad to the UK because the emergency travel document he was issued with – an EU letter – cannot be used to return him to the UK. Negotiations are ongoing with the Afghan foreign ministry and the British embassy about issuing a new travel document but to date no document has been issued to him.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/sep/14/home-secretary-ignores-court-order-sends-asylum-seeker-kabul-samim-bigzad
So, not quite as simple as Amber Rudd signing a memo and the guy instantly being on a flight back.
https://twitter.com/thespainreport/status/910494384688435200
My querying of Ms. Rudd. Is based on lack of positive achievements rather than any malign intent.
Love in anybody !!!
Irish, Welsh and Scottish to name three locally which exhibit various degrees of fanatical support. Basque, Catalan, Croatan, Serb, Albanian, Boznian, it is a long list of Nations where Nationals are willing to fight and die for. Ukraine, Polish, the list is almost endless. Nationalities will not be quashed.
Artificial countries or Empires can not permanently or peacefully in the long term impose upon Nations. Ask the Greeks, Chinese, Romans, Egyptians, Brits, Russians, French, Dutch, Spanish, Portugese or many more.
I'll have to watch Asterix again to establish the relationship with Rome.
However Spanish gov have played this crudely - should have just told voters to ignore ballot then every non voter could be counted as a remainer.
Won't impact support for a split.
Would be funny to see it happen and then Barca get punted out of La Ligua .
La Constitución se fundamenta en la indisoluble unidad de la Nación española, patria común e indivisible de todos los españoles, y reconoce y garantiza el derecho a la autonomía de las nacionalidades y regiones que la integran y la solidaridad entre todas ellas.
Indissoluble unity and AND indivisible in a single sentence. ¡Una, grande y libre!
They haven't, they've arrested those involved, sent armed Police to raid newspapers etc, etc, etc
That's changed things. Now non-voters could be intimidated by the central government rather than conscientious abstainers.
What the Treaties say is that we negotiate "taking account of the framework for its future relationship with the Union" which is where the EU is failing to meet its obligations.
Just put out there that anyone organising or telling for an ballot using public facilities will face charges later.
Yes to Independence 1/16
https://sports.ladbrokes.com/en-gb/betting/politics/international/international/catalan-independence-referendum-2017/225398521/
Southam's your man on this.
https://www.politicshome.com/news/uk/political-parties/labour-party/tony-blair/news/89127/excl-former-key-adviser-tony-blair-says
Asked whether the Government will manage to agree a deal with the EU before 30 March 2019, Mr Murphy said: "I don't think Brexit will happen. I don't think the Government has the votes."