🧵Given the ruling yesterday on the injunction to try to stop the Bell Hotel housing asylum seekers, it may be worth examining what’s going on here. Fundamentally, we are at a critical point. The judiciary sees itself as neutral arbiters of the law, with no political function. 
This is quite a dangerous place to be. The in his statements Lord Justice Bean made mention of not wanting to reward protesters such that other councils would follow suit with similar injunctions. This reasoning is explicitly political and not neutral in the slightest.
In saying that, effectively, the rights of asylum seekers outweigh the rights of the British people, this judgement and others like it risk delegitimising the judiciary in its entirety. As people come to see the law and its application as hostile to them, they will revolt.
This isn’t helped by the fact that the judges in question all seem to have political ties to the left. Bean in particular having been chair of the Fabian Society and active in the Society for Labour Lawyers. For a nominally impartial role these are deep political roots.
In the United States there is an understanding that the judiciary is in the game of politics. Supreme Court Justices are nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate. They know they play a political role.
Blair’s evil genius was in his mass drive to “depoliticise” everything with quangos. These ‘non-ministerial’ departments have the veneer of respectable, impartial, expert-led judgement. Yet time and time again they seem to come to left-wing conclusions.
Take the Judicial Appointments Commission, which is tasked with selecting judges for the High Court. Tan Ikram, who will probably be known to many of my followers, has sat on this commission for nearly 2 years. Do you think he can seriously claim to be an impartial actor?
The perception of the judiciary is going to be that they are on the side of foreigners and not the British people. It won’t matter that they’re applying The Law correctly or not. People will see the instruments of state acting against them and adjust their worldview accordingly.
This is extremely dangerous for the people who inhabit these institutions! They literally cannot see what they’re doing to themselves. We are entering uncharted territory for British politics and the constitution. What comes next could be unpleasant for them.
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