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Last year, I went against the grain in Westminster by setting out ten reasons why the UK should leave the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
Leaving the ECHR, alongside a few other changes which I discuss below, would allow us to deport dangerous foreign criminals, stop the small boats, regain control of our broken borders, and, most important of all, have a much better chance of keeping our own British people safe and secure.
And in the six months since I wrote that viral piece, the case for leaving the European Convention on Human Rights has only become stronger.
Our borders are even more of a joke. The small boats have kept coming in ever larger numbers. Our politicians and the British state have lost control. And the costs for British taxpayers have continued to surge.
Only yesterday, for example, while we already know taxpayers are having to fork out at least £5.4 BILLION a year to cover the costs of our failing asylum system we discovered that the cost of hosting 10,500 foreign criminals is costing more than £1.3 million EVERY DAY.
This is, put simply, insane.
And on top of all that, in addition to the shocking cases I highlighted six months ago, of illegal migrants and foreign criminals using the ECHR to remain in the country, there has since emerged countless other cases which you really need to know about.
Why? Because they not only reflect how truly ludicrous things have become, including in the ‘immigration tribunals’ where most of these shocking decisions are made, but they make clear how unfair the status-quo has become for the hardworking, taxpaying, law-abiding British people who have to live with the effects of all this.
So consider just a handful of the most recent cases. Like the Albanian drug-dealer criminal who entered Britain illegally and was later jailed for running a cannabis factory, causing untold damage to British children and their families. He avoided deportation because a judge, drawing on Article 8 of the ECHR, ruled it would risk “depriving his daughter of a male role model”.
Here, as in so many other cases, the ECHR was used to ensure that a criminal’s 'right to a family life’ was prioritised above the British people’s right to live in a country free from foreign drug-dealers whose goal is to get our children addicted to drugs.
Or how about another Albanian criminal’s deportation which was halted at least partly because there was concern his child might not like to eat ‘foreign chicken nuggets’. The judge, once again, allowed the appeal against deportation under the ECHR.
Or the Pakistani paedophile who escaped deportation from the UK because, according to legal authorities, it would ‘harm his children’.
In this case, the Pakistani father who had been jailed for child sex offences on three “barely pubescent girls” escaped deportation because it was ruled, using the ECHR, deportation would be “unduly harsh” on his children and right to a family life. What about the rights of the children he abused, one might ask?
Or how about the unmarried migrant couple who were allowed to stay in the UK because they claimed warring gangs in their (rapidly improving) home country of El Salvador might ‘stop their relationship’.
The couple do not speak English and do not work. They are completely funded by the British taxpayer. Nonetheless, an immigration tribunal, again drawing on the ECHR, concluded that the couple’s desire to “remain together” outweighed the “public interest in immigration control”.
Or how about the Zimbabwean paedophile who, get this, has been allowed to remain on Britain’s streets because according to legal authorities, drawing on the ECHR, deporting him back to Zimbabwe would result in him “facing hostility”.
In this case, the openly gay man had been imprisoned for more than five years for sexually assaulting children. Yet an immigration tribunal concluded that if he was deported out of Britain he would likely face “substantial hostility”.
Or how about the drug-dealing ‘county lines’ gang leader who avoided deportation to Nigeria after claiming it would breach his right to a family life under the ECHR.
Don’t worry about all the British families this person destroyed by dealing drugs. Focus instead on whether Nigeria has adequate psychiatric care to treat his ‘mental health problems’, which was one of the reasons given for allowing him to stay.
If all that’s not enough to make you think twice about our ECHR membership then how about a couple of other cases that also make clear just how absurd things have become. Like the Albanian people-smuggler who was imprisoned after smuggling other Albanians into the country to work on illegal cannabis farms.
He managed to avoid deportation by saying it would breach his ‘right to a family life’ under Article 8 of the ECHR, with one judge suggesting it would be “unduly harsh” for his Romanian wife to have to live in Albania. Relocating to the UK is apparently fine; relocating to Albania is apparently a violation of her human rights. Who would have thought?
Even more astonishingly, the judge based his decision simply on assurances by the Albanian criminal and his wife that they would not reoffend. The judgement, in other words, was made with no objective evidence to support the claim.
It’s just another example of the total insanity that appears to be playing out on an almost weekly basis in Britain’s immigration tribunals, which now routinely draw on the ECHR to allow foreign criminals to remain on our streets, in our communities.
Like the similarly ridiculous case of the Sri Lankan sex offender who was also allowed to stay in Britain because he happens to be gay. That’s right. The convicted paedophile who was imprisoned after sexually assaulting teenage boys has been allowed to stay in the UK because he claimed that returning to Sri Lanka as a homosexual risked him being persecuted.
Once again, the ECHR has been used to prioritise the rights of a criminal over the rights of the British people and their children to live in a society where these kinds of foreign paedophiles are removed from our streets.
And as if all that is not shocking enough, let me finish by introducing you to two cases which I find especially astonishing.
The Nigerian woman who tried and failed eight times to secure asylum in the UK was finally granted the right to stay after joining a terrorist group just to boost her claim. I’m not making this up.
The woman joined an actual terrorist separatist group which is banned in Nigeria but is not proscribed here in the UK. Using this, and drawing on the ECHR, she claimed she would face persecution if she was deported back to Nigeria because of her membership of the terrorist group. She was granted the right to stay in the UK.
And, lastly, the Caribbean woman who illegally overstayed her visa and then claimed she could not be deported home because her new Latvian husband would not be able to cope with “tropical” Caribbean food and the hot weather.
Once again, she argued that being separated from her Latvian husband would breach her ‘right to a family life’ under Article 8 of the ECHR.
I could go on. I could introduce you to dozens more cases like this. But I won’t. Because the point by now should be obvious to everybody.
We need to leave the European Convention on Human Rights.
We need to reform if not fully repeal Tony Blair’s Human Rights Act, which entrenched the ECHR into UK domestic law.
We need to return to being an independent, sovereign, self-governing nation which is in full control of its own laws.
And we need to start doing what all of this would allow us to do —deport foreign criminals, put an end to the ridiculous decisions that are being taken by the immigration tribunal system, emboldened by the ECHR, and put the security and the safety of British people first.
That’s what the British people want. And that’s what they deserve. They are playing by the rules and they rightly expect everybody else to do the same.
And I for one will not stop advocating for this and speaking up for the Forgotten Majority until they finally get it.
We are being treated like lambs to the slaughter, completely expendable as long as the elites can keep their insane and selfish ideology of diversity and multiculturalism. And how do we turn things around if the only alternative voice is indulging in petty squabbling like spoilt brats? I despair.
Fantastically comprehensive summary of all the insanei behaviour of our politicians, judiciary and broken legal system and I agree with everything you've said
I think we all agree with you but we have to accept that short of a revolution, nothing is going to get done for at least 4 years and based on the current Reform in fighting maybe not them.
Personally I think we should put up a petition on go.uk demanding we IGNORE the ECHR or ask for a Referendum.
No one wants this madness to continue where everything is upside-down. The good hard working people have no rights and if you're an evil criminal you have all the rights!
Enough !