In the Times, former Supreme Court justice Jonathan Sumption warns Fraser Nelson that democracy is at risk as power shifts from parliament to the courts, fuelled by lockdowns, a safety-first mindset and the enshrining of principles like DEI in law. Here’s an excerpt:
Some years ago, a man dived into a shallow lake in a Cheshire beauty spot and broke his neck. He sued the council for compensation, saying that the “no swimming” signs were not enough because people were ignoring them. A court agreed. The case made an impression on Jonathan Sumption, not as proof of lawyers going mad (the case was later rejected on appeal), but as proof of a wider trend: the expansion of a safety-first mindset and, with it, the steady erosion of liberty. …
His third collection of essays and lectures, The Challenges of Democracy: And the Rule of Law, develops the theme of his 2019 Reith Lectures: that power is shifting from parliament to the courts in a way that threatens democracy. He says his theory found terrible vindication when Covid arrived and people demanded draconian restrictions that had no basis in science. He sees this not as a freak event but as a leap in a long-term slide towards a kind of soft popular autocracy. “We are entering a Hobbesian world,” he writes in one of the essays, “the enormity of which has not yet dawned on our people.” …
He sees lockdown not as an anomaly but as the moment when Britain “turned the corner” on liberal democracy, “a change in our relationship with the state” that was, essentially, consensual. “It was what people wanted. Government manipulation partly explains that, but I certainly don’t think it’s the whole of it. More important was a more general propensity of the population to look to the state for things that the state is actually not capable of doing.” In this case, stopping a virus in its tracks. …
Rarely among lawyers, Sumption is critical of what he calls “the legal view” of society: that certain principles (equality, diversity) ought to be enshrined in statute and be put outside the reach of politics. “There are lots of people who essentially want their own social policies to have the force of law, preferably a fundamental law which governments could not encroach upon.” The Equality Act and the Human Rights Act both made it easier to sue using judicial review. “This is actually a serious problem and it can only really be dealt with by raising the threshold at which you can quash or can criticise a government policy,” he says. …
Is this what he means by the death of democracy: more laws, red tape and courts governing ever more of our lives? “No, I don’t think the courts are the main enemy. I think that the main enemy is the public at large.” Too many people want the “smack of firm government”, he says. “It’s an image that perfectly summarises what many people want. A smack. It implies a nanny, with a great rod.” …
One improvement, he says, would be withdrawing from the European Convention of Human Rights. “My view is that we should enact the convention in its proper language, and transfer the power of interpretation to our own courts from the Strasbourg court.”
Worth reading in full.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
Cool. But the money and sheep are still here:
https://www.thefp.com/p/taylor-swift-unites-america?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjoxNTQ3NDkyOCwicG9zdF9pZCI6MTM1OTQzMzU4LCJpYXQiOjE2OTE4MzQ2OTIsImV4cCI6MTY5NDQyNjY5MiwiaXNzIjoicHViLTI2MDM0NyIsInN1YiI6InBvc3QtcmVhY3Rpb24ifQ.TlbvddDzoWxFjghGbZdl4unjBQnQWpjf1obx2CZhKd8&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
Nice song.
Typo – “So no one needs Anthony to come out in favour of a particular particular party.”
That’s particularly pernickety.
In fact it’s more than particularly pernickety, it’s particularly particularly pernickety.
I make no judgement, just pointing out a typo…
The choices were, complain about it, ignore it, update the article.
Thank you for playing.
Funny – I read that paragraph twice without noticing – and I speak as a dedicated pedant. Well observed!
Me too, and I was a proof-reader most of my professional life, with a similarly critical, some would say irritating eye. Some things simply escape you, and there’s no telling why, other than the fact that we usually scan rather than read. Sometimes it gets past a group of readers, such as the 19th century report of the Queen pissing over Westminster Bridge. Then again, there are the deliberate attempts to fool the editors, often practised by Kenny Everett, who was notorious for ‘going off script’ and finally warned that if he changed one word he would be taken off air. So here’s the exchange that got past them and was out there before they realised: “I want to join, but they won’t let me in”. “I’ll get you in, I’m a country member”. “OK, I’ll remember”.
How ironic that Rolling Stone took its name (in part) from a Bob Dylan protest song with lyrics in the same vein. I guess that like the Rolling Stones (band) it gradually became an Establishment rich kid.
Ad eventually knighted
…yes it’s often hard to watch the “mighty anarchists” of yesteryear who you have admired all your life turn into snivelling establishment shills…I still cringe when I think about Neil Young’s spat with Spotify, over Joe Rogan….and less said about ‘jab only’ participants at Foo Fighter gigs…..
This is the once great Eminem….LOL!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wGb60nwiFk
I guess now we can stop looking for the guy we needed to unlock the prison cell and let Trump come out to be sworn in as POTUS.
Big kudos to Nick for gettin’ on his guitar geek!
My take from the RS article is that they really don’t know what to do with it: at one level they seem to recognise the aching need for decent, honest and skilful music with deeply meaningful lyrics, but on another level simply can’t deal with the fact that some of their pet ideologies are in the firing line. Wait until someone does a song about The Laptop From Hell…(blues riff, I reckon!)
On this theme for what it’s worth this song has kind of become my theme song since the covid nonsense started;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LK0ZFpfn1cM
They and their audience are so ‘un-hip’ it great stuff, not only that they are called ‘The Whites’! it happens to be their name, 2 middle aged sisters and their Dad and I really like the pedal steel guitar player.
Like it
Nice. The audience is “horribly white”.
I’m very fond of this: Sweet Home Alabama / In The Practice Room #3 – YouTube
They seem to have 7 children…
I was prepared to dislike it, but, while it is rough and does not scan in places, it gave me bumps. More and more is needed.
The Rolling Stone publicity can only help him.
I think Five Times August is better:
https://youtu.be/oE3idi85jfQ
That was my first thought but hey, the more the better!
If we’re having a Sunday morning protest song vibe, James Roguski just forwarded this guy: some very slickly produced parodies. Groomin’ particularly disturbing
https://rumble.com/c/c-2244004
I hope you make money hand over fist, Mr Anthony. And I hope you keep sticking it to them and I hope you keep saying it how it is. Bring it on, brother.
I like the song. That said, we live in a time when humans in our part of the world have life just about as easy as it has even been possible to be. I sit in an airconditioned office moving buttons about for 36 hours a week, free coffee, heating, perfectly comfortable air, saving for old age, basically care free, etc etc.
I’m hardly working the fields for a pompous landowner, fending off barbarian attacks or making clay for 16 hours a day under a life debt.
I’d like to have had a family in a neighbourhood where all my friends and extended family could have afforded to live, surrounded by people I know and love. I think our quality of life has peaked sure, without fossil fuels and birth rates only propped up by invaders, it’s now on the down slope, but it wasn’t so bad. It’s just a shame, because it could be so much better.
Well put , I’ve said for a while that if you have lived in the Western World since WW2 you have exsisted in the BEST period of Human History since Man (&they,them,etc 😳)first drew breath !
Agree with all that, but “peados”? What happened to ‘paedos’? Lol.
Perhaps those with a predilection for Petit Pois?
Great article Nick, absolutely superb.
Brilliant song, great lyrics, and amazing passionate delivery. Good luck to him! He deserves it.
What is Rolling Stone and does it opinion matter to anyone with a brain to make their own assessment.
“Musically it’s simple, just four chords in the key of G minor, by my calculations,”
Not sure about ‘four chords in the key of G minor’ – he’s actually using the ubiquitous ‘lazy chord’ sequence’ which is I – V – vi – IV, with a ‘I’ chord in this case of B flat major. It’s the chord sequence used by every other pop song these days. See this, by Axis of Awesome. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pidokakU4I
The great advantage of this chord sequence is that melodies featuring very few note changes can be sung over the top of it – pefect for the vocally chalenged – which leaves less for Autotune to do.
I must get out more.
Thank you for this nice demonstration of They always watch but cannot see and they always listen but never hear.
I get my inside
From watch spider man
I’ve learnt a lot from Peter Parker
About dealing with the world.
Or from Youtube.
A virtual nickel offered to anyone who knows the song.
Another authentic artist for our times is the wonderful Five Times August.
Check him out on YouTube. You won’t be disappointed.
I will not be leaving quietly https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NVnfM_H7TY
Add to the above
“Jason Aldean – Try That In A Small Town”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1_RKu-ESCY
which apparently is racist, as it notes that were you an Antifa type, and tried what they did in Portland and elsewhere in a “small town”, you’d get short shrift.
So clearly racist…
Good for Mr. Anthony. I raise a glass to him, and use the regular toast that my wife an I use…
“**** ’em all”.
Ah, protest songs of old:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=9tDZ5lriIIc&feature=share
The inimitable Mr. Lehrer.
My favourite is Blind Joe: –
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqdXJIrMuLA
That’s a good song although it could do with less reverb in the vocals. The musical accompaniment is also really good, ie, simple but effective. The lyrics are a bit stereotypical, but Rich men north of Richmond is a great line. That’s the kind of street music I’d spent money on instead of just – as usual – contemplating whether it’s feasible to throw pound coins at them until they turn to flight.
Listening to the pod.
No recognition that Richmond was the capital of the Confederate States in the American Civil War and it’s the most Northerly secessionist town.
Anthony isn’t claiming to live there.