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IF you want to get your head around the inchoate rage over human rights which has gripped the right for nearly 30 years, you could do worse than studying the peculiar case of the Daily Mail’s reaction to Max Mosley’s sex parties.
In 2008, the News of the World was successfully sued by the former Formula One boss for exposing what it had characterised as his “Sick Nazi Orgy with Five Hookers”. The Nazi part was incorrect, as it turned out, but the rest was on the money.
However, the judge in the case ruled that Mosley had a right to privacy under the Human Rights Act 1998. That was the piece of legislation which incorporated the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR) into UK law.
This infuriated former Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre (below). Speaking at the Society of Editors’ annual conference, he railed against the then-prime minister, saying: “If Gordon Brown wanted to force a privacy law, he would have to set out a bill, arguing his case in both Houses of Parliament, withstand public scrutiny and win a series of votes.”
In an incredible non sequitur, he added: “Now, thanks to the wretched Human Rights Act, one judge with a subjective and highly relativist moral sense can do the same with a stroke of his pen.”
Dacre appeared to have forgotten that the Human Rights Act had been set out, as a bill, in both Houses of Parliament, had withstood public scrutiny and passed after a series of votes. And in so doing had created a privacy law.
The right wing's hatred of European human rights law goes beyond politics, beyond sense. The ECHR is more than merely a legal instrument; it is a demon, a phantom, a spectre which must be resisted and crushed.
The Human Rights Act enshrined in UK law the right to privacy which is set out in Article 8 of the ECHR, which also sets out people’s right to family life. It is this article and Article 3, the prohibition on torture, which are particularly irksome for the right as they are frequently deployed to block deportations .
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Which brings us to the present day. Nigel Farage used one of his lesser-spotted stints on the floor of the Commons on Wednesday in a failed bid to quit the ECHR, depart the Council of Europe and repeal the Human Rights Act.
That his rejected 10 Minute Rule Bill gave first billing to the ECHR and not the domestic piece of legislation is telling. The ECHR has become the bogeyman of the right of late and those letters carry special significance to those whose brains have been fried on the smoking grill of Elon Musk’s Twitter/X algorithm.
For one reason or another, the Tories never got around to scrapping the Human Rights Act while in power but have, since their return to opposition, recommitted themselves to finally confronting their Moriarty .
One block on the Tories’ ambitions for scrapping the Human Rights Act is the numbers of their backbenchers who remain tethered, at least partly, to reality and think that removing one of the few legal constraints on the power of the British executive would be a bad idea.
In that regard, they align with a near majority of the British public, 46% of whom oppose leaving the ECHR.
It is a consistent frustration of the right that the UK Government lacks the sort of sweeping executive powers invested in the US president, currently employing them to wage war in the streets of his own country .
While Farage’s attempt to scrap the ECHR on Wednesday was doomed to failure, it does not mean the issue has gone away.
On his side, it may be argued that many of the “protections” afforded by the convention are ancient rights that people have had in Britain since there were countries called England and Scotland.
And across the floor, it may be pointed out that after 30 years, legal precedents will be harder to unpick than simply repealing one piece of legislation. Anything that promises to be a “quick fix” is unlikely to be anything of the sort.
But as a move to unfetter the executive, it should send alarm bells ringing for all those who might be concerned about an ever more powerful British state.
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