This article originally appeared in our Elevenses newsletter.
Good evening. Hidden in Suella Braverman’s address to the House of Commons today was an astonishing admission. Unveiling her plans to tackle small boat crossings in the Channel the home secretary confessed that the proposals she has put forward are likely to fall foul of the European Convention on Human Rights. Indeed, she estimates that there is a more than 50 per cent chance the Illegal Migration Bill may be incompatible with the law, but says she has faith in the courts to consider ‘any endorsement Parliament gave’ to her ‘robust and novel plans’.
But although Braverman’s proposed Bill might look like legislation, will be debated like legislation and will be discussed in the media like legislation, it is actually nothing of the sort. In fact, this is one of the first-in-its-kind pieces of ‘Deepfake’ legislation that the Tories know full well will be almost certainly overruled due to its illegality, but are happy for it to be so because it allows them to blame the woke, left-leaning courts for derailing their plans while they do little to actually resolve the problem in the same way as they have for the past 12 years.
As one barrister put it to us after the announcement, the Conservatives are “introducing a law that they know will never become law”. The real purpose of the bill is simply to “shift the blame for illegal immigration from the Home Secretary to whichever campaign group challenges the bill” in a bid to relieve themselves from taking any meaningful action. Ahead of Braverman’s address in parliament, The Express had splashed ‘Back Law To Stop Boats… Or Betray Britain’ on its front pages. In the piece, the paper quoted the home secretary saying: “Labour and others who oppose these measures are betraying hard-working Brits up and down the country – they don’t have any answers themselves but they will still seek to block us in Parliament”.
Lee Anderson and Jonathan Gullis also peddled the same rhetoric in parliament, with the newly-appointed deputy chairman of the Conservative Party slapped down by Yvette Cooper for suggesting we ‘shouldn’t go after gangs’ because they have ‘existed for thousands of years’ while the MP for Stoke North, meanwhile, refused to blame years of inaction for the increasing number of asylum seekers lodged in hotels in his constituency and rather blamed Labour for, and I quote, “refusing to sign his petition” on the matter.
It has been some time since the British parliament has debated a Bill that on its very front pages contains a disclaimer that the home secretary cannot guarantee that it is compatible with the convention on human rights. But before we all work ourselves into a fit of rage, let’s take a moment to consider what the Conservatives are actually planning to do here and take comfort in the fact that this could well be one of the last acts of a government that has both run out of road and run out of ideas.
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