Thread by @StarkNakedBrief

We need to talk about our judiciary (again).

It looking less and less like a bastion of impartiality and more like a politicised activist class in robes.

Other Western nations, take note.

Thread 🧵

Just days ago, investigative reporter @thomasgodfreyuk exposed another judge whose background poses a direct conflict of interest with her work in the Immigration and Asylum Tribunal.

Such judges hear and decide cases involving deportation matters. They sit within the Immigration and Asylum Chamber of the First-tier Tribunal and, for appeals on points of law, the Upper Tribunal.

Godfrey discovered Judge Leonie Hirst, a former member of a refugee charity, is the same judge who has repeatedly blocked the deportations of various criminal “asylum seekers”.

In June, she refused to deport a serial Albanian burglar with almost 50 convictions because his crimes were not “extreme” enough. In her eyes, they apparently did not cause “deep public revulsion”.

In April, she also stopped the deportation of a Jamaican rapist because, ironically, she considered his crimes too severe, which would put his "life at risk" in his home country.

For reference, she wasn’t some minor advisor for that charity. She served as a director of the now-closed Refugee Legal Centre.

Now, she rakes in £180,810 per annum (most of these judges earn £170,000+) in a role where her activism can literally take root.

To the untrained eye, such blatant conflicts may seem unlawful.

How did the judicial vetting process miss them? Why didn't Yvette Cooper’s Home Office (now Shabana Mahmood's) cited such conflicts as grounds to review and challenge these rulings?

Why exactly remains speculation. What is certain is that Hirst is far from an exception.

Judge Greg Ó Ceallaigh KC from Garden Court Chambers—a set renowned for challenging Home Office deportations—also works as a deputy upper tribunal judge in the Immigration and Asylum Chamber.

In April, Ceallaigh spared a convicted cannabis dealer from deportation after the convict claimed that he only committed the crime because he ran out of money during the Covid pandemic.

Ceallaigh concurred with a first-tier tribunal ruling that the dealer was at a “very low risk of reoffending”, despite government lawyers arguing that no thorough investigation had taken place to substantiate that claim.

When The Times dug into Ceallaigh’s background, the penny dropped...

Not only had he posted in support for Labour’s decision to scrap the Conservatives’ Rwanda scheme, but he had also reposted a message from Asylum Aid on LinkedIn calling for the full repeal of the Illegal Migration Act.

In 2012, he further wrote on Facebook:

(This is an active judge comparing the soft-liberal Conservative Party that oversaw record migration to Nazis).

What’s curious about this case is that Ceallaigh has been working on immigration cases as a barrister, while simultaneously presiding over others as an immigration judge—all very recently.

In March, only months after his appointment to the Immigration and Asylum Chamber, Garden Court Chambers announced that Ceallaigh helped a man wrongfully exiled from Britain reunite with his family.

Some other judges to take note of?

Judge Rebecca Chapman, Judge Fiona Beach, Judge Melissa Canavan, Judge Sarah Pinder, and Judge Gemma Loughran—just to name a few.

All have clear ties to pro-refugee orgs, preside over cases, and have spared foreign criminals from deportation.

Judge Chapman was almost unbelievably seen coaching other barristers on how to successfully win asylum claims using the ECHR.

She advised them thoroughly on when and why they should cite a lack of proper healthcare on human rights grounds.

And if you thought such conflicts are confined to immigration judges, you’d be wrong—very wrong.

Just last week, one of the High Court judges that ruled in favour of the Home Office to keep a migrant hotel open in Epping, Essex, was found to have long standing ties to the Labour Party.

Lord Justice Bean, who sits on the Court of Appeals (the most powerful only below the Supreme Court) happens to be a former Treasurer for the Society of Labour Lawyers—a think tank that calls itself an “affiliated socialist society”.

His father was also chair of the Fabian's.

The judicial code of conduct states:

“(Judges) should, so far as is reasonable, avoid extra-judicial activities that are likely to cause them to have to refrain from sitting because of a reasonable apprehension of bias or because of a conflict of interest”.

It adds:

Given the severity and number of conflicts listed above, in what world could a “fair-minded and informed observer” not think there are serious conflicts here?

Better yet, where are our judicial oversight bodies?

The whole thing stinks to high heaven.

I've gone into more detail on my Substack—more cases, more judges, more conflicts.

But it seems I was subject to DNS attack yesterday upon publishing the piece so my domain doesn't work anymore.

You can still find it through substack by searching for my page "The Stark Naked Brief".

You might be able to access it here (if you have the sub stack app on your phone):

open.substack.com/pub/starknaked…