Bill of Wrongs

A cross-party committee of MPs has endorsed the idea of introducing a Bill of Rights to Great Britain.

This is one of those ideas which seems attractive on first sight, but on the second makes any sane person run a mile and then hunt around for a shovel to beat the thing to death with. In abstract, an American style Bill of Rights is a great thing. It's a document that was brilliantly conceived and has stood the test of time as one of the great works of human freedom. However, Britain is not America and this is not 1791.

For one thing, a Bill of Rights as the Americans have is impossible to have in Britain because under the parliamentary system no act of Parliament is binding on any future Parliament, which can rescind previous legislation at will. For a Bill of Rights to be effective, a constitutional convention would have to be convened and the whole of British law, tradition and precedent would have to be reduced to a single document. And I can't see that happening anytime soon in any honest fashion.

The second reason is that this is not a true Bill of Rights. The American Bill of Rights and its English precursor from 1688 were essentially records of negative rights that enumerated limits on state power. They regarded the rights of the people to be granted by God and all powers not specifically surrendered by mandate to the state remain with the people. This is clearly shown by not saying things like "The people have free speech" or a free press or the right to bear arms, but rather that the state does not have the power to infringe upon these rights. Period.

The proposed Bill does not wipe away the hated EU Human Rights Act, but rather sets it in stone and elaborates upon it with all sorts of other "rights", such as "health, housing, education and an adequate standard of living". Indeed it is such a shopping list that if it went any further it would have a "right" that would be an insult to all womankind. This is a socialist manifesto written by men who regard rights as a grant of the state, not the Almighty, looking to be implemented in such a way that it would be no more questioned or repealed than the Ten Commandments –by the people, opposition or Monarch, that is, since the provisions of the Bill allow the Party to run roughshod over these so-called rights as it sees fit.

If this is a "Bill of Rights," then it is of the sort I'd write for my dog rather than for free men. No, I take that back. My dog doesn't deserve to be treated with such disrespect. This Bill is nothing more or less than a promise made to a bullock without guarantee to be treated well as it's fattened and then slaughtered humanely come Michaelmas.

Against this I will happily settle for Magna Carta et al any day.