The door slams shut on another principle of justice
Maurice O'Brien • Published 9 Sep 2010 09:30
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OF ALL people you’d imagine William Hague might firmly believe in the virtues of being innocent until proved guilty.
Which makes it all the more ironic that, just before his personal storm in a baseball cap, he was talking up an ethical foreign policy based on human rights.
Because, oddly enough, despite being prepared to spill the most sensitively intimate details in defence of his private life, as Foreign Secretary he’s shown scant public concern for the 1,032 Britons packed off to assorted European lock-ups in the 12 months to last April to await trial on evidence which is flimsy at best and often non-existent.
Those 1,032 collars have all been felt thanks to the European Arrest Warrant which, on the whim of testimony that wouldn’t stand up in quick-setting concrete, let alone a British court of law, will bring bobbies to your front door in stab proof vests, draped in radios, pepper sprays and assorted ironmongery, to load you on a plane bound for Numptyville. And let’s not forget the one-way traffic across the Atlantic courtesy of Uncle Sam’s unreciprocated use of anti-terror laws to cover any number of infinitely lesser evils.
So with due respect to Home Secretary Theresa May’s planned review of extradition agreements, it’s a bit late now, dear.
To the Americans, might is right and, rather inconveniently, the Lisbon Constitreaty, that masterpiece of fine tuning, has enabled the EU to effectively remove the tradition of habeas corpus from British law. But Mr Hague, and the rest of our B.O.G.O.F. Government, left us toothless when they and the last lot broke their promise to give us a referendum; while Dave’s vainglorious pledge to recapture our laws from EU clutches is an insult to our intelligence.
We’re helpless to stop the bloated European Commission swelling the EU budget by 7.6%; helpless to avoid the surrender of the post-Blair remains of our rebate; helpless to protect surgeons’ training or postal deliveries; and helpless to prevent Baroness Cathy’s foreign ministry, the sinister sounding European External Action Service, occupying a Brussels office block at an annual rent of £10m while no fewer than 100 of her ‘diplomats’ trouser more than the £134,565 salary of the aforementioned Mr Hague.
And Baroness Cathy, never elected to anything more onerous than the school hockey team, addresses the United Nations next week on behalf of the United States of Europe. Ye gods. But when they’re bundling you through that cell door and throwing away the key, remember this: the food’s free and you’ll never complain about foreign hotels again.
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