Please read this

This is an important post.

And at the end of it, the question will be, does the British, UK, people, care enough to do anything, or will we do a collective shrug?

Where to start?

A Government has to have the moral authority to Govern. That is to write and pass laws that we, the people, follow.

Laws are passed for many reasons, some we might not understand or actually like, but laws are there.

And the grand underlying principle to this is that no one in the kingdom is above the law, not even the head of state or Monarch. We did cut the head off a king to prove this once.

And so we should expect the Government to obey the laws it passes. Sometimes, it might push the envelope on this, but there are mechanisms for the public to seek redress and force the Government or a Government Minister or department to change policy. One of these is Judicial Review, and the current Government is seeking to greatly reduce this, or in the case of the IMB totally non-applicable,

The Government has two political appointees whose job it is, among other things, to uphold the law. One even swears an oath to that effect. It has been said in the past that having a person trained in the law in such a position would be a good thing. Chris Greyling had no legal training as Lord Chancellor, but his failings were incompetence and terrible policies. His successor, Michael Gove, also had no legal training, but appeared competent simply by reversing Greyling’s failings.

Robert Buckland QC is the current Lord Chancellor, and is well trained in the law, and swore an oath to uphold the law, and yet is happy that the IMB, among others, are incompatible with International law, and indeed will break it. Clearly, having a person with a legal background matters little if he/she care not for the rule of law itself.

In the past 15 months, Johnson and his Governments, have shown themselves to be more than willing to break the law. Last year he and the Leaders of the two Houses of Parliament were found to have given the Monarch unlawful advice. And earlier it was unclear whether his Government would obey an amendment demanding his Government to seek an extension to the A50 period. It was always assumed that, in the end, when push came to shove, the Government would always obey the law.

Then came the pandemic.

Rules and guidelines were flouted by Johnson, his Ministers and most famously by his chief advisor. No one had to resign, even though driving hundreds of miles for no real apparent reason, when the rest of us watched our loved ones being buried on CCTV, was fine.

But this eroded the Government’s moral authority. If Cummings can do it, when all he was doing what any normal loving Father would do, why can’t we all do what we want?

Which is rather the point.

So rules and guidelines are now laws. Laws so complicated and fractured over the land not one person in the land can say if some actions are legal in one part and not another, or if they can it takes hours of searching through the nearly 60 Sis issued in respect of COVID. The police can’t be sure, as one day’s Sis are overwritten by the next, issued withour scrutiny or debate, obviously contradictory in places, and the legal text sometimes issued just minutes before they come into force.

If there were enough police to enforce these iit would be bad enough, but the successive Conservative Governments have cut police numbers up and down the land by tens of thousands, and slashed the legal system as a whole, closed courts and limited the working hours of those that remain open, so that the backlog of cases was years long before COVID, opening Nightingale Courts matter not a jot if there are no staff or money to run them, or the courts we already have.

So, a month ago, the Northern Ireland Secretary, stood at the dispatch box, and read out a legally prepared statement that the Government proposed it was going to break the law, in a limited way. But breaking the law is breaking the law, in the same way you can’t get pregnant in a limited way. And whether it is domestic or international law, matters not, both are against the Ministerial Code, whether Ministers claim it isn’t, the law doesn’t change. Which is why taking that first step is the hardest, it gets easier after that, which is why we should be worried.

As the IMB showed, clauses in it allow the Government to break any existing domestic or international law, and there can be no comeback either in court or by Judicial Review. A piece of such illiberal legislation has never been written in this country in modern times. And yet the Government whipped it’s MPs, and not one of them voted against the IMB and for the rule of law.

That is another huge step, the Legislature allowing the executive carte blanche to break laws without scrutiny by them or by the courts.

This has all been reported in the press, and we all sigh.

Both law officials of the Government are in legal representative bodies, and apparently face no sanction for not upholding the law. The Attorney General is the de-facto head of the Bar, and seems that she will keep that.

It has been said that the UK lacks a written constitution, like the US. But it has one, it is written in the tens of thousands of laws that Parliament has passed dating back to Magna Carta. What it doesn’t have is a codified constitution, one that is written in one place, like in the US. But then we can see that even then, when someone like Barr ignores the constitution, all we can do is sit and watch, because at the end of the day, a constitution relies on convention, and people on all sides of the political spectrum obeying the conventions, when they don’t, the system breaks down, and Governments break the law, breaks those laws it doesn’t like, whilst expecting us, the public, to follow laws we do not like.

Driving out of Folkestone towards Ashford, there are a small set of roadworks near the Channel Tunnel on-ramp, and there is a speed restriction of 50mph to protect the workers digging a new ditch beside the motorway. Last week I went through at nearly 60, knowingly breaking the law, not by much, but breaking it nonetheless. I assumed, correctly, that I would not be caught. On the A20 into Dover, there are average speed cameras that I do know work, and I obey these, always. As otherwise I would more than likely get an automated fine through the post, receive a fine and points on my licence.

If you were to break COVID lockdown laws, would you be caught?

If you were to think, probably correctly, that the 22:00 hour curfew on alcoholic drinks being served in pubs, bars and restaurants makes little logical sense, should you obey it?

Places that have flouted these regulations, no matter how illogical they are, have had their licence revoked, meaning they have lost their trade and livelihood. Good, you might think, but when data clearly shows that the surge in cases is not from licenced premises, but in private homes, a law that makes little sense, is all but unenforceable, especially in a climate when regulations and laws are changed on a sometimes daily basis with no scrutiny or explanation, should we care? When it is against the law for people to stand of a terrace of a football ground, socially distanced and wearing masks, but legal for those to be in the clubhouse of the same ground, watching the game on TV, whilst the windows looking out onto the pitch are blacked out; it is madness.

Yet is the law.

When people can’t attend a football match outside, but the Royal Albert Hall can host an event with 55% of capacity attending. A reminder that the Royal Albert Hall has a roof, there should be a “rule of 6”, even if they said they were going to shoot ducks.

No wonder people are angry. But people, mostly, want to protect their friends and family from the disease. Hard wen some on the right, and left, are arguing for restrictions across the board to be lifted, some newspapers scream in banner headlines, misrepresenting the facts in regard to all or some experts, but remember other experts in fields like trade and finance should be ignored when it comes to Brexit, all wanting us to go back to normal, while those in high risk groups should quarantine. Many people have not left their house, except for emergency shopping, in nearly seven months, are we seriously suggesting they should now be under self-imposed house arrest for their own safety, while we go back and let the virus spread through the rest of us? Remember that a mortality rate of 1% means nearly 700,000 dying, or 1,400,000 with 2%, and untold millions with “long-term COVID” costing the NHS billions in long term care.

But now the question at the top of the page:

does the British, UK, people, care enough to do anything, or will we do a collective shrug?

The Government is going to break the law, and is in the process of passing legislation that will allow it to break many more laws, without redress. Do we care enough, as a country, to allow this to happen, or remember this when the next election comes round? The Government is banking on us not caring. They clearly don’t.

In the same way that 120,000 people dying as a result of austerity, and 70,000 more excess death this year linked to decisions make in regard to COVID, the Government want us to blame ourselves, and for the most part, polls show we are.

We must care that the Government is abandoning the rule of law, because soon, more laws could be ignored and we will be able to do nothing.

Because it will be too late.