Britain’s new government

Oh, get over it! In 2011 a whopping 68% of the Brits voted in favour of the current voting system in a referendum. That means the vast majority of them support the system that got the current government in the saddle. To suggest there is something wrong with a government because only a fraction of all Brits voted for it is disingeneous.

Hmm. According to Branko Collin (which of course is ‘Nilloc O’Kranb” spelled backwards), a majority of people voted for a system in which a minority of electors can choose the government; therefore, minoritarianism is fine, because of… majoritarianism? Or perhaps it’s just that the majority voted for, before, the government they couldn’t before they voted not for, now, the government they could not be for?

Either way, I think I liked it better in the original. “People can come up with statistics to prove anything. Fourteen percent of people know that.”

Branko Collin: actually about 30% of British voters voted for the current system, in a campaign that was systematically misleading in many respects.

Chris – while I share your concerns about virtually all of these new measures, I think there’s a hyperbole problem in how you describe them. I don’t think it’s (entirely) fair to characterise the anti-extremism laws, however loathsome they may be, as ‘criminalizing dissent’ or the umpteenth Tory scrap with the BBC as a wholesale attack on independent journalism. Again – I’m on your side here, and find all this legislation really disturbing, but it’s important now that the Tories have a slender majority to mobilise public opinion against them so that passing these laws becomes that much more difficult, and their repeal that much more likely.

As an aside – I trust there’s no longer any reason to point out why having the Liberal Democrats around to put a brake on the most authoritarian instincts of the Conservatives was a good thing…

Phil – no, there wasn’t. But given the ideological basis of the party, and the fact that it spent five years in government frustrating every Tory attempt to introduce the above…

The LDs had already run out of road on the Snoopers’ Charter. Those of us watching closely knew the HO was going to reintroduce it, minus the LDs’ limits, after the election, whatever happened. I hugely appreciate the individual efforts of, say, Julian Huppert (LD Cambridge) to mitigate some of the worst elements of this policy in the last government. But all they did was buy about 18 months. Not worth it, frankly. A hell of a lot more might have been achieved in opposition to a Tory minority government. So no, putting a brake on something that is happening anyway is not hugely valuable to me.

Fair enough, Daragh. You’re right – it’s not useful to think about the hypotheticals from 2010 onward.

scrapping the HRA and replacing it with a British Bill of Rights is likely to improve, not reduce, access to legal remedies against genuine government abuse

In the immortal words of John Cleese, explain the logic underlying that conclusion.

I haven’t seen anyone writing about it yet, but aside from the clear problems deleting the HRA would create for the Good Friday Accord and in Scotland – almost makes you think the Tories don’t want to preserve the Union! – there is an issue with the armed forces.

Since the Iraq war, UK case law has established that the ECHR is directly applicable to the conduct of British armed forces abroad, particularly articles 2 and 5 on due process and detention. The ECHR applies wherever British forces go, and to whomever they deal with.

Repealing the HRA would create two problems. First, that whatever Bill of Rights the Conservatives are likely to come up with will be attempting to constrain and eliminate the need for the armed forces to treat prisoners properly, etc. It may surprise some, but that will not go down especially well with, e.g. the Army Legal Service who tend to come down hard on offences. Also other soldiers who, unlike the DM, tend to have little or no sympathy for the likes of Marine A. (And especially for Marines B and C, who completely got off. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-24870699) This stuff may play well in the shires, but not universally so amongst the people it would be expected to ‘benefit’.

Secondly, since the Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns, an awful lot of case law has further enmeshed the ECHR into military justice, its criminal justice counterparts and filtered down into the rules of engagement – down to the . A BoR will create massive uncertainty and confusion, even if it is eventually recognised by the Council of Europe as satisfying the ECHR requirements (something that is by no means certain and will take years to effect).

Let’s not forget that the 1998 HRA was passed in the context of a country coming to terms with systematic abuses in Northern Ireland by the military, and in GB within the criminal justice system against convicted terrorists later (much later) found to be innocent.

This stuff doesn’t come out of nowhere. The HRA wasn’t just, as its critics have it, a crusading internationalist Blairite weeping liberal apology. It was a principled response to a massive domestic problem, and it largely did the job.

@Phil: In the slim chance that you’re actually looking to discuss the issue, the HRA implements the ECHR into British law. This is an incredibly squishy document, with a very broad reach but very little substance. Consider, for example, the article on freedom of expression:

Article 10 – Freedom of expression
1. Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers. This article shall not prevent States from requiring the licensing of broadcasting, television or cinema enterprises.

2. The exercise of these freedoms, since it carries with it duties and responsibilities, may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society, in the interests of national security, territorial integrity or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or rights of others, for preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence, or for maintaining the authority and impartiality of the judiciary.

In other words, you can have freedom of speech, except it has to be balanced against a laundry list of concerns as long as your arm, and even then saddles judges with impossible determinations of what’s “necessary in a democratic society.” So the sweep of the convention is both much too broad, in that almost any policy that could possibly affect information transfer is a potential breach (maybe the license fee!), and much too narrow, in that it fails to provide categorical protection for core freedom of expression.

So, for example, is the proposed counter-extremism bill the OP complains about in breach of the ECHR, and hence the HRA? God only knows. Certainly it restricts freedom of expression. But then, the limits are justified by national security. But then, are those limits “necessary in a democratic society,” and how on earth can a judge determine that? In practice, it will very likely pass muster, because judges are simply not in a position to evaluate national security claims like these. I note the irony that the OP complains about the government’s restrictions on free expression, and also that it wants to replace the HRA, when the HRA won’t protect us from the claimed breaches of free expression he’s complaining about.

What’s actually needed is a different method of rights protection, one that doesn’t open up the courts as a political front by providing light protection to almost anything (see for example Article 8 litigation), but that does provide categorical protection to a narrow set of core rights. Now, we don’t know what would be in any BBoR, partly because the Lib Dems tied this up in the last Parliament, so it’s certainly possible that the new law would be no better than the old (though I find it hard to believe it could be any worse). So let’s wait and see what’s in the law before we get too excited either way, but I’m very optimistic.

I think the political realities of the Human Rights Act situation will be interesting.
I wouldn’t be surprised if you could find around 15 Tory MPs who have principled reasons for not endorsing the withdrawal. That’s enough to make for a very close vote indeed.

I think the most significant battle coming down the road is the EU membership referendum. That has the potential to truly recast the fate of the nation.

The rest of Chris’ list is interesting because if we anticipate that the EU referendum will be a noisy and tough contest, then these are the things the government feels it must do before that starts. If the referendum goes for Brexit, parliamentary time will be swamped by the need to organise the exit. So these are the very peak priorities – which should give the economic libertarians who vote Tory some food for thought.

Salem – you’re optimistic that the government will introduce a law that will make sections of its own legislative program illegal? Right.

No. I am optimistic that the new BBoR will provide categorical protection for a narrow set of core rights, while avoiding the endless balancing tests affecting all and sundry.

I don’t believe that hate speech in public places is a core right (incitement to religious or racial hatred is already a crime, and rightly so). Nor are “violence, public disorder, harassment or other criminal acts.” Chris is the one claiming that this counter-extremism bill (which none of us have seen, even in draft form) is some outrageous limitation on free expression, not me.

Also striking workers don’t actually have guns, batons, handcuffs, straitjackets and nuclear missiles at their disposal…

I don’t know about the rest of you, and as an American, I may be missing some cultural cues, but that quote alone to me is chilling enough, no matter how you interpret the actual legislative and executive proposals/actions.

Doesn’t that statement oppose the very essence of a liberal democratic republic? Doesn’t it oppose the foundation of the rule of law? It literally expresses a desire for a pre-Magna Carta conception of government’s power vis a vis citizens.

As authoritarian and illiberal as the right is in America, and as cute and cuddly green as your Tory’s grass often seems in comparison from this side of the fence, I do not ever recall reading a statement so chilling from a Republican in a major leadership position.

“I do not ever recall reading a statement so chilling from a Republican in a major leadership position.”

Really? Bit of a short memory then.

I have seen this “hah, now you miss the LibDems lefties!” stuff all over the web

It’s probably mostly written by Daragh. He and his friends have got a lot of time of their hands these days.

A majority of 900 voters: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/ampp3d/general-election-results-just-900-5682492

The thing all these proposals have in common is (a) they seem to respond to right-authoritarian demands, which is worrying, and (b) they’re incredibly vague. We can’t critique the BBoR in detail because it’s not been drafted yet. Nobody’s willing to give an example of a specific case that would have been resolved differently under BBoR but not subsequently overturned on appeal to ECtHR.

Meanwhile the press are very keen to paint Scotland as a “one party state”, and the MPs elected by a clear majority of votes cast as illegitimate.

@Joe – I’m not suggesting that at all. I’m suggesting – accurately – that the only other alternative was a Tory minority. And while the Lib Dems made compromises – more or less axiomatic when one is in coalition – so did the Tories. Hence the introduction of these various, reactionary bits of legislation AFTER the Tories won a majority and were no longer obliged to govern in coalition.

@38 Nothing will really satisfy the UKIP tendency other than TV footage of immigrants being rounded up and herded onto a boat. It’s not a coherent set of realistic demands in response to real, specific problems, it’s the end result of years of media immigrant-bashing and benefit-claimant-demonisation on top of long term unemployment and regional economic decline.

Bring jobs back to Clackton, Grimsby, Lowestoft, etc. and you might quieten it down.

I want to reiterate Michael Sullivan’s point. That quote reads like a renunciation of liberalism and the rule of law. I mean, those things have been dead in the water for years with ‘anti-terrorism’ laws and so forth, but to hear someone actually say so… How are people reacting to this in the UK?

Wow, it gets better. First EU exit, then “withdraw from the E. Convention on Human Rights” (note, the second doesn’t depend on the first – Turkey is signatory of the ECHR).

Does Cameron really want to turn Britain into a pariah state?

The ECHR actually allows member states to opt out of certain human rights guarantees during a national emergency. You know of course who in the past has been the only European country (to my knowledge) to use the opt-out clause? That’s right, Britain, first to fight the IRA and then after 9/11. I remember there was a court decision denouncing the opt-out and a judge saying that to compare a band of terrorists with the WWII existential threat of a Nazi invasion was insulting. Wasn’t that where the HRA came from? (I may be mixing things up, any clarification appreciated). In any case, Salem’s complaint in 19 that ECHR is too vague is bizarre. ECHR defines minimum standards, which Britain would be free to exceed if they really wanted to, but past history doesn’t really suggest that any British government is eager to be held to stricter human rights standards.

Shouldn’t it be pointed out that the maxim “as long as you obey the law, we will leave you alone” has been abandoned a long time ago (under Labor of course) with the introduction of the ASBO, created to make entirely legal behavior illegal (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-social_behaviour_order)?

That quote of Camoren’s is certainly chilling but it’s also a lie.

Sasha is in some cases too moderate in describing Chris’s post as hyperbolic: if there were such a word, I would suggest perahyperbolic. Taking his denunciations one at a time:

Intimidating independent journalism. This amounts to enquiring whether the current system for funding the BBC – by a tax which must be paid by anyone wanting to watch TV, whether they want to watch the BBC or not, and with a law that can send anyone not paying the tax to prison – is just and necessary. Arguing that it is not is not obviously evil, or even wrong; no matter how high one’s opinion of the BBC’s output.

Making legal strike action impossible. This amounts to making strike action in a limited number of essential services illegal unless at least 40% of those eligible to vote support the strike. Against that, there are two possible arguments. That such strikes should be legal no matter how few people support them; or that a limit is necessary, but 40% is too high. Either argument, from Chris, would be interesting.

The argument that the current government also failed to get over 40% of the electorate voting for them and is therefore illegitimate is specious: no government since 1945 has had the vote of over 40% of the electorate. But we do have to have a government. We don’t have to have a strike.

Criminalizing dissent. That would be horrifying if real: actually, what is proposed is criminalizing extremist organisations who use hate speech in public places. Not the same thing at all: though I have doubts about the whole concept of hate speech. Tories are scum, tories are vermin, eat the rich: is that hate speech? I doubt it. Mere vulgar abuse, with nobody likely to suffer as a result in the real world . We hate the kuffar, Jews are the offspring of pigs and monkeys: maybe, and innocent people have suffered. Chris: your opinion?

Increasing state surveillance: what is proposed is to required internet and mobile phone companies to keep records of customers’ browsing activity, social media use, emails, voice calls, online gaming and text messages for a year. Rather benign surveillance compared to actually oppressive regimes. How oppressive depends on what the security people are allowed to do with those records. Chris: how much surveillance is needed to stop planes, trains, buses exploding?
Or how many explosions will you accept as the price for reducing surveillance?

Blocking access to legal remedies against the abuse of state power. My memory is that, before the HRA, there were such remedies. Also, that some of the judgments under the ECHRA have been very doubtful. Could such be usefully dispensed with?

Long post, I should maybe have broken it into 5 sections. Apologies: I didn’t have time to make it shorter.

I don’t remember voting for the current system in a referendum. I do recall being asked if I was interested in some other system, and I said yes. I certainly wasn’t asked if I was entirely happy with the way things are, which is a different quesiton.

“But we do have to have a government. We don’t have to have a strike.”

Precious.

“to keep records of customers’ browsing activity, social media use, emails, voice calls, online gaming and text messages for a year. Rather benign surveillance compared to actually oppressive regimes.”

Only the emails, voice calls and text messages are subject to state surveillance? Oh, and social media use and browsing activity. But nothing else? Really? And people make a fuss about that???

N/A: right, so you don’t think there is anything wrong with a system in which I have to pay a tax to fund the BBC (whether I want to watch it or not) and can be sent to prison if I don’t.

Interesting opinion. Why?

“Interesting opinion. Why?”

For the same reason that you should go to prison if you refuse to pay taxes to fund the police or the NHS. Even if no-one commits a crime against you or you never get sick. It’s called the social contract.

A/A: I have no idea what you mean by “neo-feudalism”. I do have a clear idea what has been meant by feudalism. Please define.

N/A: you are entirely right is saying that “extremist organisations who use hate speech in public places`” is a vague concept. I gave examples of hate speech that I think might not, or might, be rightly classified. Your opinion?

N/A: if you really believe that pre-October 2000 “there was no defence for a British citizen whose rights/freedoms were denied” we must have been living in entirely different countries.

Hey Stephen, you should post some more. I don’t think you’ve posted quite enough yet, a few more posts should do it though. Don’t despair, chin up, and just keep posting.

@JW Mason
Yes indeed, but the Riot Act and similar legislation are rather blunt instruments by comparison. You could also talk about emergency laws and so forth. But there is no emergency. This and anti-terror legislation bear more than a passing resemblence to lettres de cachet.

Look, I’ve always regarded liberal universalism to be a bit of a sham, but that doesn’t mean that its hypocrisies weren’t sometimes constructive. What does it mean when liberal democracies no longer even bother with pretense?

Some people can be talked into anything …

For the same reason that you should go to prison if you refuse to pay taxes to fund the police or the NHS. Even if no-one commits a crime against you or you never get sick. It’s called the social contract.

This is a good argument for why I should pay the license fee, given that it’s in force. It’s not a good argument as to why a democratically elected government can’t abolish it.

The license fee is unfair, regressive, expensive to collect, and out of date. A quick glance at the BBC schedule puts paid to any notion that the majority of the money is used for any kind of public service broadcasting. I do not see why the poorest people in the country, who disproportionately watch television, should be unable to do so for free, and frankly I don’t see why anyone else should have to pay a forced subscription to a sub-standard provider either. I’d like to see the BBC go down to one national TV channel, one national radio station, news collection, plus some local stuff, all dedicated to genuine public service broadcasting, not imitations of what is already commercially available free of charge, and funded out of ordinary taxation.

As for the article linked, it’s absurd.

Now you’ve put me in a quandary. Which to take more seriously: a 4000-word article by a Reader in Public Law at Cambridge, or a tetchy one-paragraph put-down by Some Guy on the Internet?

“This is a good argument for why I should pay the license fee, given that it’s in force”

Well I was asked about being forced to pay money to the BBC. Being forced to pay something applies to all tax, so I answered the question I was given.

“The license fee is unfair, regressive, expensive to collect, and out of date”

I agree, but the Tories so far haven’t proposed something to rectify that – simple inflation protected funding out of general taxation. Instead they’ve proposed “taking on the BBC” in terms of the viewpoints it has expressed, potentially freezing yet further or even reducing the amount of money it gets, and also removing criminal penalties for non-payment of the licence fee. That last one in particular is not about “keeping BBC as is but making funding fairer”, it is a clear, calculated attempt to reduce the amount of money it will get, and therefore reduces its ability to function.

“a sub-standard provider”

By what metric? ITV? Channel 4? Absurd. News output is obviously not as good as Al Jazeera, but overall it seems to do an okay job. And yes, that’s my subjective opinion, like yours, however viewing figures for BBC output tend to be decent, suggesting it wins the eyeball market. And for non-public service stuff, consumerism is the only valid metric really.

“I’d like to see the BBC go down to one national TV channel, one national radio station, news collection, plus some local stuff”

Well at least you admit your goal is to shrink the BBC. It’s a legit viewpoint, but don’t pretend it is to do with the “unfairness of the licence fee”. You can have a licence fee and a big BBC. A licence fee and a small BBC. No licence fee and a big BBC. Or no licence fee and a small BBC.

As for your view on shrinking the BBC, well I disagree. Consider the political economy of it. Can a small broadcaster which produces stuff watched by hardly anyone, sustain it’s existence as easily as something that produces Dr Who and Match of the Day? Doubtful. And consider the intellectual and artistic freedom of it. What body are you going to set up to make sure the BBC’s output is only your kind of “approved” public service stuff? Who gets to decide what is in the public interest, and what’s not? Better to give the BBC complete freedom to produce a lot (especially if you plan to drastically reduce its funding instead!), and then let it get on with it, and stop the state meddling in its programming.

“not imitations of what is already commercially available free of charge”

How do you know it’s not the other way round? How do you know the BBC isn’t a basic standard which pushes the private broadcasters to do better? There’s no reason to believe an entirely private broadcasting system would be perfectly efficient even in populist entertainment shows.

Can I just say that anyone who actually talks about “HMG” should be mercilessly ridiculed, as part of my solidarity campaign to undermine any and all British values whenever possible.

re 76
Bermuda being where the first Rothermere fled after his far too friendly letters to Hitler came to the notice of the Cabinet in 1939.

Always so patriotic the Tory Fascist press Barons!!

As the OP seems to have unfortunately decided that the arguments of his critics, whether on hyperbole or the merits of the licence fee (full disclosure – I think it’s a good thing) aren’t worth engaging with beyond pointing and laughing, I’m going to leave this link here in the hopes that a more ideologically acceptable source might be useful in driving the argument forward.

@N/A re: HRA

[I]f the state expropriated people’s homes for demolition without even compensation, that would be a human rights issue, especially if they didn’t find them anywhere else.

I think this gets to the nub of the issue. I agree that would be a human rights violation, and similarly if the people of Sipson were machine-gunned to move them out of the way (which is equally likely). But merely building the third runway and having planes land on it would be thoroughly unobjectionable from a human rights point of view. Yet we face the prospect of campaigners tying up the government for years in spurious arguments that aircraft noise at Heathrow is somehow a breach of human rights, and it’s made even worse by the fact that the ECHR took their claims seriously (although ultimately ruled against them). This is why the government has said that the BBoR will be limited to “the most serious cases” – because at present the law is so vague and all-encompassing that it is possible to challenge almost anything.

“You are out of date.

On the contrary, the UK remains in breach of the ECHR according to the court, which your link re-iterates in the very first sentence. They just didn’t award any compensation. As I’ve said before, I think this is the best possible resolution from the UK’s point of view. The government won’t have to pay any “compensation” to these criminals. The government won’t have to waste time and money defending future cases, because the failure to award costs is a strong discouragement to future litigants. And best of all, it normalises the refusal to abide by absurd ECHR rulings. Because no-one has any incentive to re-litigate this case, the breach is going to stay outstanding indefinitely. So the next time the ECHR makes some barmy ruling, the government of the day will be able to cheerfully ignore it, and say “Look, this is exactly what we did in the prisoner voting cases.”

@Chris – I’m not implying any obligation on your part to engage, and you’re free to think of others what you will. The point is that there are many people here (including, if I may say, myself) who were extremely disappointed with Thursday’s result and are looking for a constructive forward path that results in some non-Tory alternative being in government and are of the opinion that the continued preferencing of ideological purity over coalition building cannot achieve that, nor can shouting ‘betrayal!’ at Liberal Democrats because they couldn’t magically make the total number of Labour and LD seats won in 2010 equal 323. If you want to continue searching for the One True Left and sneering at the rest of us while lamenting the follies of the electorate and denouncing the evil of the Tories in the most hyperbolic terms, that’s your choice. I personally think building alliances that can realistically win and hold power, with all the compromises and disappointments that entails is a more productive use of all of our time. It certainly is more likely to result in the implementation of policies that might achieve progressive goals. I’m assuming that, and not intellectual posturing, is the ultimate goal. Please correct me if I’m wrong as I’d be happy to disengage if it isn’t.

I find the widespread and deep-seated hatred of the LibDems a bit puzzling, or rather the fact that it seems so much stronger than antipathy towards the Tories or UKIP. I’m not a fan of the LibDems either, but hey, they did oppose the Iraq war that Labour sold us on and they did oppose some of the more egregious policies undermining civil rights.

(and just to avoid potential misunderstandings: I am somewhere in the bottom left of this matrix: http://www.politicalcompass.org/uk2015 )

We really don’t need human rights laws and courts. We can just leave it to some random guy on the internet to decide what is and what isn’t a human rights violation (correct answer: there are by definitions no violations in the UK). In particular, people simply shouldn’t have the right to appeal to courts over perceived violations of their rights since such appeals are frivolous by definition (said some random on the internet). Britain really doesn’t need judicial oversight. Britain most definitely doesn’t need the ECHR, which it keeps violating anyway.

All of that makes a lot of sense, if you like being a pariah state. I actually think it would be a great move for “HMG” to cancel the ECHR. Why keep up pretenses? Be open about your contempt for foreign ideas like constitutions and human rights. England hasn’t needed the in the past and won’t in the future (Scotland may be a different matter).

Reading parts of this thread have caused me to reflect on the fact that Grant Shapps now has more time on his hands.

Grant Shapps is the kindest bravest warmest most wonderful human being I’ve ever known in my life.

The Manchurian Candidate again? How about All these moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain? The Tories have lasted a long time, but even they won’t last forever. Unlike Mark Zuckerberg, who could theoretically survive even the Butlerian Jihad.

Ben – jeez who would? but it might be fun to watch.
Novakant @89 I followed the link, the chart looks very much like the one used by the Libertarian Party (US), I took the test, then had it display the print out version and found myself nestled in the warmth of Kropotkin’s beard – just where I belong.

All – thanks for helping a yank decode Brit politics.

“I’m always amazed at these “political economy” arguments that government services have to be wasteful, inefficient and clientelist service because if we tried to do them well, the public wouldn’t support it”

You’ve just completely strawmanned my argument. Nowhere did I say that the BBC should be wasteful or inefficient. I said that it should be allowed to make Dr Who and whatever types of programs it fancies, and not just In Our Time. That is an argument for providing programming people want, not for “waste”.

“On the contrary, the UK remains in breach of the ECHR according to the court, which your link re-iterates in the very first sentence”

No, because I was responding to you saying that the case was still “outstanding”. As my link says, “The Court has drawn a line under its dispute with the UK” – it is therefore not still outstanding.

@ 89 & 90:

Not being a Brit, I don’t follow or understand U.K. politics all that much. I did start to pay close attention to the matter in early 2002, when I thought maybe Toney Blare would be an impediment to the beating war drums, but was quickly disabused of that dim hope. And at least under Kennedy, the LibDems had managed to position his party on many issues to the left of New Labour, (ironically, since the party partly originated in a defection of the right of old Labour), and had the great good merit of having been the only major party to have firmly opposed the Iraq fiasco. But even I knew that Clegg had committed his party to political suicide, in joining a coalition with the Tories, against his much of his own electoral base. I’m at least glad to see my political judgment vindicated.

Re Tony Blair: Yesterday, my 13 year old nephew was asking me about politics. In the course of the discussion, I started explaining why I left the Labour Party in 2001, and he interjected, incredulously: “Tony Blair was Labour? – I always thought he was a Conservative!”

@68 Reading the Wikipedia link on Liversidge vs Anderson, I note that, as usual, Lord Denning appears as an enemy of freedom. He was incredibly well regarded by the law students I knew back in the 70s.