HUMAN rights should be a noble ideal, promoting freedom and guarding against tyranny.
But tragically, in the hands of leftie lawyers, politicians and campaigners, this uplifting sense of purpose has been lost.
PAAn injunction banning the Bell Hotel from housing asylum seekers was overturned by the Court of Appeal[/caption]
Sky NewsLord Justice Bean, who delivered the judgment, along with two other Court of Appeal judges[/caption]
At its worst, the human rights regime in Britain has been turned into a battering ram against our civilisation, a tool against our democracy and an agency that protects foreign criminals but not our borders.
The grotesque inversion of common sense, traditional patriotism and civic decency by the human rights regime is embodied in the disgraceful saga of The Bell Hotel in Epping.
In recent months there have been major protests by the Epping public against the use of this hotel to house illegal migrants.
Backed by this wave of fury, Epping Council successfully took legal action against the Government, persuading the High Court to rule that ministers had acted unlawfully in changing the use of the hotel.
Ruling is disaster
But one of the sad lessons of modern Britain is that the woke Blob usually gets its way.
And yesterday the Appeal Court duly overturned last week’s decision and ruled that The Bell Hotel can still be used for migrant accommodation.
Even though the ruling is a disaster for the public purse and social cohesion, it has the virtue of clarifying where the Government really stands.
We now know from this appeal that the Home Office openly believes that the rights of foreigners should come before those of the British people.
The whole madness of border destruction, identity politics, diversity indoctrination and institutionalised self-loathing is captured in the court’s verdict.
Behind all the legal jargon, the bewigged judicial elite is effectively saying that Britons are second-class citizens.
This is the two-tier world built by the perverted notion of human rights.
It is telling that one of the judges in the case was David Bean who previously worked for the left-leaning human rights advocates Matrix Chambers.
But the outcome just emphasises the urgent need for radical change.
A successful country cannot be run by a ruling class who have such contempt for its people.
In particular, we will never get a grip on illegal immigration while the human rights regime remains in place.
The system is hopelessly outdated and irrelevant to our needs.
Both the 1951 United Nations Refugee Convention and the 1953 European Convention on Human Rights were born out of repulsion at the barbaric horrors of the Second World War.
They were never meant to be a catalyst for mass immigration or a gigantic system of global welfare support.
Indeed the world was a completely different place in the early Fifties, without cheap air travel, mobile technology, international communications and social media.
The kind of free-for-all that now exists is unsustainable.
We cannot possibly take in everyone who wants to escape their circumstances.
There are no less than 120million displaced people around the world plus at least 700million living in absolute poverty.
Times Media LtdDavid Blunkett was involved in the implementation of the Human Rights Act[/caption]
Getty – ContributorFormer Tory Foreign Secretary Malcolm Rifkind[/caption]
AFP – GettyJudges at the European Court of Human Rights[/caption]
What we need is a modern system for modern Britain.
That means suspending or repealing the Human Rights Act as several elder statesmen have argued this week, including Jack Straw who was the architect of the 1998 Act as well as the former Home Secretary David Blunkett and former Tory Foreign Secretary Malcolm Rifkind.
Given that experience and their previous support for the ECHR, their voices should be heeded.
Ending the operation of the Act does not mean — as some left-wingers pretend — that we are abolishing human rights in Britain.
We had such rights long before the 1953 Convention.
After all, we were the country that pioneered Magna Carta and Parliamentary democracy and civil liberties.
But given the strength of the liberal establishment and how extensively the tentacles of the 1998 Act are woven into our civic fabric, that will be a huge task.
Urgent action
That is why, rather than going for wholesale repeal which could take up a huge amount of parliamentary time, the first stage would be for the Government to derogate from the Convention — implement a suspension — as it applies to immigration and the deportation of illegals and criminals.
Such a suspension would buy time and enable us to get on top of the present crisis.
Derogation has happened before, usually to protect British forces in Northern Ireland and other combat zones like Iraq.
But the emergency at our borders is very real now and demands urgent action.
Sadly there is little chance of such a bold move coming from Keir Starmer who, like his Attorney General, worships the human rights regime and cannot contemplate its removal.
He should be in no doubt that his continued refusal will only send more voters to Nigel Farage and Reform UK’s door.
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