Fifty Percent Success, Thirty Percent Solution

David Cameron has called for Britain scrapping the Human Rights Act and replacing it with an American-style Bill of Rights.

Aside from the fact we already have a Bill of Rights dating back to 1688 that has served us quite well (or rather, does when the government in power respects it), this proposal is a good example of why the Conservatives have a long way to go before they are fit for government again.

Cameron would have been right in pointing out that the Human Rights Act is an wretched piece of Euro-legislation that is unnecessary, incompatible with British law and should never have been adopted in the first place, but the idea of replacing it with a Bill of Rights is ill-conceived in that Cameron seems to forget that in today's political climate draughting such a bill would be an invitation for every crackpot pressure group to insist that everything is a "right" up to and including banana yogurt every Friday lunchtime. Not that this matters, as such a bill would be meaningless without a major change in the constitution, because as things currently stand, no act of parliament is binding on any future parliament and therefore such a bill would have none of the standing of its American counterpart.

Perhaps David Cameron should have done a bit of trimming and changed "We should scrap the Human Rights Act and introduce a Bill of Rights" to "We should scrap the Human Rights Act."