All systems go!

Once again, I’ve been humbled by the generosity of my readers. The project I outlined yesterday is most certainly going ahead now. Some people, though, have asked why I don't get involved with Restore Britain and help them out instead. As it happens, I am helping out. This is the most productive thing I can do.

As much as anything, once you get on board with a political outfit, you are obliged to moderate your criticism and address concerns privately. I’m not doing that. From experience I know that it’s difficult getting people to take on board certain concerns, and frustration eventually leads to fall outs, and animosity - which I certainly can’t be bothered with. Especially when I have no particular beef with the people involved.

The point for me is that an organisation like Restore Britain, with all the money and attention it soaks up, has an obligation to be nothing short of excellent. So far, I'm not at all impressed. It’s public facing website isn’t even half-arsed. Since that is their public face, that is the standard they are to be judged on, and that’s a debate worth having in the open. If they’re not presently embarrassed by their own content, they bloody well ought to be.

As such, working on my lonesome, on a shoestring budget, I aim to set a minimum standard. With Charlie Downes and Harrison Pitt on board with Lowe’s venture, both very capable men of good judgment, they should have no problem making me eat my words. I aim to scrutinise everything they do to keep the buggers on their toes. If that isn’t helping, I don’t know what is.

Thanks to your generous donations, I have more than enough to proceed with this, with a little surplus I will use for hosting costs. Initially, I'm going to keep it very pared down, with no flashy gimmicks, focussing instead on quality of content. My web guy is already getting stuck in, and I will be raring to go the moment I get back from RIAT on Sunday.

From my research last year, I did identify some gaps in my knowledge, so I may do the occasional fundraiser to commission additional content. I have identified some credible subject matter experts, chosen for their clear-sightedness over political alignment, but I don't expect them to give me work for free, so I'll be using the operating reserve to pay them a small token of gratitude. Intellectual labour has no capital costs, but I still believe people should be paid for it.

I'm looking at an initial rollout of September, populated with the core policies, but the process will identify areas for development, and subsequent debates will trigger revisions.

With this, I'm not going to put policies to the vote. I don't think that's the way to go. I know the list of right-wing/populist gripes probably better than anyone having been involved (sometimes reluctantly) in fringe politics since the early days of Ukip. I'm not interested in what sounds popular. I'm interested in what will work. I will proceed on that basis, whether people like the results or not. Chesterton's Fence will be at the forefront of my thinking.

Once again, many thanks for your support on this. I cannot promise perfection, but I can promise an honest and realistic assessment of the issues. One option I’m exploring is setting out the counter arguments for anything Restore Britain proposes, if only so that they can firm up their own arguments. I expect there’s a lot more to be said on the matter of the ECHR since it is an article of faith on the right that we must leave.

On that matter, I become less convinced by the day. Yesterday evening the Telegraph led with “Lawyers seek to use ECHR to force UK into accepting thousands more Afghans”. As usual, though, the Telegraph is offering a very skewed headline. Ultimately, it's British laws and British judges in British courts. Unless I missed something, this is judicial review. The Telegraph is pulling a fast one.

From my reading of this, any government could pass emergency primary legislation to stop it since the Supreme Court cannot overturn primary legislation. If it passed primary legislation, the most the courts could do is issue an ECHR declaration of incompatibility, to which the government's response can simply be an indifferent shrug. Which opposition MPs are going to lodge an amendment to admit infinity Afghan migrants? The problem is, the Labour government has no interest in stopping it.

That, to me, is the root of the problem. We have yet to see a government with the steadfast determination to navigate the system to our advantage. It’s easier to take the path of least resistance and blame the ECHR. As Rakib Ehsan in the Telegraph puts it, “While I supported the UK’s withdrawal from the European Union following the June 2016 referendum on the UK’s membership, it is vital that we resist the tendency to externalise blame for the UK’s problems on international institutions based outside of it”. I think this might actually qualify as understatement of the year.

The more I think about this, the more I'm inclined to think the way forward, instead of committing to leave the ECHR, is that we set up an ambush on an issue like this, where the blob is forced to take it to Strasbourg. If they rule against us, on an issue like this, then the ECHR has demonstrated beyond all doubt that it is not fit for purpose. We then ignore the ruling to see who blinks.

My bet is nobody will, because every European country is facing the same constitutional stresses over human rights, and to press on something as profoundly offensive as this would be to blow up the entire system. We need a test case to see if they have a deathwish. This is as much politics and diplomacy as law. This could be the crunch that precipitates ECHR reform.

I had previously written off any notion of reforming the ECHR as naive and futile, in that substantive reform requires unanimity, but if we can force a crisis that brings us to the brink of exit, it could trigger an emergency summit, in which France and Germany express their own concerns. That could lead to reforms to how ECHR is interpreted on immigration and asylum - recognising that the framework is obsolete and never anticipated the global migration crisis we see today. It’s worth a try because the alternative is worse.

Essentially, we need to test it to destruction. Does the Council of Europe have a deathwish? If so, the entire edifice of international law collapses. That may sound appealing, but we do not want that. The right has an aversion to international law, but the problem is not international law. It is the elite’s relationship with it, believing it to be a holy writ rather than a diplomacy toolkit. If you know how to wield it, it can be a powerful tool that protects and enhances sovereignty. For my part, I would want to see all avenues exhausted before going ahead with ECHR exit.

Some argue that we have already reached exhaustion but that was never fully put to the test. To be fair to the Tories, they were determined to press the Rwanda principle. The Safety of Rwanda bill was the first real attempt to establish parliamentary supremacy on immigration matters, striking out international law in primary legislation. The only way around that for the blob would have been to take it directly to Strasbourg. Had Rishi Sunak not called an early election, they may well have proven the concept. It all comes down to one basic test. Either parliament is sovereign or it isn't.

Governments are, or course, at liberty to ignore Strasbourg rulings, so then it becomes a test of whether government would rather uphold an obsolete, democratically questionable international order, or whether they see themselves as primarily accountable to the people. That, more than anything else, is the core dysfunction here. For sure, activist judges are a problem, but there is scope for the government to put its foot down.

I say all this, because I don’t see ECHR exit as much of a remedy to our immediate immigration woes. I think it falls at the first hurdle. There’s the immediate question of whether ECHR exit is a breach of the Good Friday Agreement. Recently, we've had Peter Lilley's CPS paper on leaving the ECHR and when it comes to consequences of leaving, just like he did with Brexit, any complications are met with "nah, it'll be fine".

On this matter, I just KNOW Lowe/Habib/Lilley/Starkey, will argue that leaving does not breach the GFA but, actually, it doesn't matter what we think. It's a near certainty that one or other of the GFA signatories will see it as a breach if they do not have the remedy of taking a court case to Strasbourg.

That will be the first legal challenge. And if they win, it’s an almighty mess. If they lose, it’s an almighty mess. The system can be patched with inelegant fixes, but what you get for your trouble is a dog’s dinner of a system, that any subsequent British Bill of Rights has to align with, with any number of unanswerable questions attached to it.

On that basis, I’m inclined to think it isn’t worth the trouble for any government with a thin mandate to attempt it when there are more profitable measures we can take in terms of addressing problem immigration. I intend to write a fuller exploration of this for the new website.

Ultimately, anyone can write a compelling paper on why we should leave the ECHR. That’s not hard. Writing the outline of how we do it, and what replaces it, is far harder. You cannot begin a transition process unless you have a clear idea of what you’re transitioning into. To do that requires an honest appraisal without the tendency for self-delusion the populist right has. While I might still be convinced of the case for leaving the ECHR, it’s more the question of when and how that determines whether it’s a good idea or not.

Knowing what I know about the populist right, particularly at the Habib end of the debate, there is no hesitation in blowing up the entire international order, along with the Northern Ireland Protocol, the TCA, and anything else in their gunsights. But it doesn’t hold up without contingency plans. I certainly understand the sentiment, but as with Brexit, I ultimately come down on the side of careful disentanglement as opposed to uncontrolled demolition. I cannot condone the nihilism and carelessness of the populist right.