Tim Worstall asks: “Are We Still a Free People?“:
We have a Home Secretary who has been told by the courts that locking foreigners up and denying them their right to trial is illegal. The basic presumption is that one must either be tried and convicted, or be being held on remand while that process is put in train, for it to be allowable for the State to lock you up. His reaction on being told that foreigners have the same rights as natives was, quite amazingly, to remove that right for natives. Quite.
The most basic foundation of the relationship between citizen and state, that of the right to trial, Habeus Corpus and all the rest, has been altered. It is seriously proposed that the Home Secretary should be allowed to intern anyone at all, on no evidence that he has to reveal (and thus can be argued against), for as long as he wishes. We all know that miscarriages of justice happen, the Birmingham Six and Guildford Four being examples, even when there is an open system with judges, juries and the like. We’ll never know under the new system as no one will ever have to tell us.
Quite. The illiberal moves by this government are rather worrying.
