Michael Howard launches Tory assault on the rule of law
Dictator Boris Johnson: He’s already making the hand signals. Next he’ll be designing his own uniform.
A failed former Conservative leader has launched his party’s attack on the rule of law by claiming that judges are corrupt.
Michael Howard said judges sometimes “distort” the law they are interpreting “to reach the result they want to achieve”.
Interviewed by BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, he said: “I think that judges have increasingly substituted their own view of what is right for the view of Parliament and of ministers.”
There is no objective basis for his comments.
I mean, what is he implying? That all the judges in the Supreme Court are Labour supporters? How ridiculous!
The Conservative government wants to end the rule of law in the UK because Boris Johnson was upset by a court decision that his attempt to prorogue Parliament earlier this year was illegal.
The Supreme Court was absolutely right in its decision, which was based on the law of the United Kingdom, and on evidence about Mr Johnson’s attempted prorogation.
But Mr Johnson believes that his Conservative government should be able to do whatever it likes – including breaking the law.
So he needs to undermine the legal framework that protects us all from the dictatorship – because that’s what it is – that he intends to impose.
And that is the reason Lord Howard has attacked the judges of the Supreme Court.
It seems likely that the Johnson government will try to change the way judges are appointed, making them subject to political patronage.
This would be an enormous act of hypocrisy, as Lord Howard’s argument is that judges are already too political.
But Boris Johnson won’t care. With a massive Parliamentary majority, nobody can stop him.
He can do whatever he fancies.
He just wants to make sure enough voters are persuaded by paper-thin arguments like those of Lord Howard.
And he won’t have any trouble with it, will he?
After all, he went into the general election on a similarly flimsy claim – and look how many voters were duped into supporting that!
Source: Michael Howard: Judges sometimes ‘distort’ the law to reach result they want – BBC News
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The Tories think they are above the law, or that the law should exist to serve them. In practice a Right-wing government is just one step away from Dictatorship.
Well Chris greyling took the sick disabled mentally ill justice away they now want to bend the law to suit themselves corrupt lot are they
All they do is APPLY the law. They do not interpret it, or adapt it to their own ends. They apply it. And wasn’t he something in the law himself?
Scum before he was Tory leader, scum when he was Tory Leader and he remains scum to this day!
“The Conservative government wants to end the rule of law in the UK because Boris Johnson was upset by a court decision that his attempt to prorogue Parliament earlier this year was illegal.” It was found to be unlawful; a subtle difference.
£aw is open to interpretation, which is why legal professionals will disagree and applied to each circumstance; if it were simply a matter of application, we wouldn’t need lawyers.
The issue with the prorogation that never was is that a new legal precedent had to be set, because none existed. There was precedent for a certain circumstance, as presented by £ady Hale, which is why the Court was able to pass judgement but not for this particular event, hence the new legal precedent, the “one-off.” The issue has divided those in the legal profession, indeed, £ord Sumption said that, before the ruling, he would have given the same advice to the Prime Minister but the Supreme Court ruling is final. Mr. Howard may not like the new precedent and may feel that the Supreme Court was encroaching on the political but the fact that a case was brought necessitated this; whichever way the ruling went, the Court would have been forced into the political arena, such was the nature or the case. What Mr. Howard hopes to achieve I don’t know, given that there are so many differing opinions within the legal profession.
He wants to sully the good name of the judiciary in order to set public opinion against it and make it easier to put a Tory government above the law.