Thread by @AdamWagner1

This @jennirsl article in The Times has confirmed my fears about why the BBC should not have given Jonathan Sumption the Reith Lectures platform. (Short thread) thetimes.co.uk/article/14ac26…

As I have said for ages, the same narrow-minded, historically illiterate arguments which supported Brexit (national sovereignty, reclaiming control etc) can, superficially, apply to the European Convention on Human Rights.

Predictably, Sumption made those arguments in an non-nuanced and reactionary way, and those who listened think, well this is a Supreme Court judge, he must be on to something. There are so many SC judges who would have been more responsibly critical or supportive

I’m afraid @jennirsl’s article contains a number of factual howlers - I blame @thetimes sub editors and also Sumption, whose lectures have the whiff of Brexiteer-style rhetoric which was never too worried about accuracy

Here are a few howlers

1. It has *never* been Tory policy to withdraw from European Convention on Human Rights. The Human Rights Act is a domestic law which brings the convention rights to our local courts. The EHRC is an international treaty

This bit is a complete fabrication

2. Though you wouldn’t have picked this essential information up from Sumption’s lecture (as it damages his argument) the HRA doesn’t allow courts to strike down primary legislation - so not the main laws parliament passes. So this is fake news. Irresponsible too.

3. Tony Blair didn’t sign us ‘make us subject to Strasbourg’s decisions’, Winston Churchill did when we signed the European Convention on Human Rights in 1951.

4. And again, the whole point of the HRA is it can’t override ‘current acts of Parliament’, it can only declare they are incompatible which just leaves it for Parliament to decide what to do

That’s parliamentary sovereignty! It’s the whole point!

This is so frustrating because it is so predictable. The argument over the European convention on human rights and human rights act is going to come back with a vengeance as soon as Brexit is done. And like Brexit we have irresponsible scaremongering instead of a proper debate