February 13, 2025 - 7:00am
Keir Starmer had a lucky escape at yesterday’s Prime Minister’s Questions. After the courts declared that a group of refugees from Gaza have the right to settle in the United Kingdom, the Labour leader evaded any difficult questions by calling the judgment “wrong”. He also coasted by on a lie: a false promise to close a loophole that does not actually exist.
The Gazan family of six, including four children under the age of 18, initially saw their claim refused by an immigration tribunal. This decision was then overturned by Judge Hugo Norton-Taylor for a well-trodden reason: Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which covers the right to family life. If one man from Gaza gets into Britain, all his relatives have a human right to come and join him — that’s just the rule of law.
While the applicants did apply through the Ukraine Family Scheme, something minimally-competent officials might have noticed, that wasn’t the basis for the tribunal’s decision. Starmer pledged to “close the loophole”, but policing it more tightly won’t actually solve the problem. So long as someone already in Britain is pleading their right to family life, their family will almost certainly get in. There’s no need to risk the Channel when you have a man on the inside.
In fairness, it would be very amusing to watch Starmer instruct Attorney General Lord Hermer, perhaps the only person in the Government more committed to international law than the PM, to solve the problem of Article 8. At a minimum, it would involve prisoner-votes-style carve-outs from the Convention, if Britain doesn’t actually leave.
But that isn’t going to happen. Instead, we’ll get another round of performative policies, with the Home Office announcing measures that will be rendered moot by the UK’s treaty commitments.
Of the entire case against the ECHR, that against Article 8 is the strongest. Whatever the original intent, decades of Strasbourg and domestic jurisprudence mean that it is now a policy which makes effective border control impossible. A sensible immigration policy would reflect this. Every would-be immigrant, and asylum seeker, should be assessed not as an individual application, but alongside all the people they could potentially give a legal right to live in this country.
But this government won’t do that, and for much the same reason that it doesn’t count the huge cost of dependents when calculating the economic case for a legal migrant. Immigration policy is an exercise in cooking the books: focus on one job filled, or one person’s sad story, and wave the rest through as simply the inevitable operation of the system.
Opposing all this ought to be easy. There are innumerable ways in which the law could be changed to remove these shortcuts through Britain’s notional border policies. Yet all of those involve admitting that it is the law — in this case, Article 8 — which is the problem. If it can’t be scrapped — and amending the Convention would take decades, were it even possible — then it needs to be curtailed in British law.
This can be done, and Britain already managed it with prisoner votes. The ECHR applies in Britain only via the Human Rights Act — and the Human Rights Act is just a piece of legislation, open to amendment. Any politician who won’t do that, however tough their rhetoric or superficially appealing their policies, is playing pretend.
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SubscribeIf one man from Gaza gets into Britain, all his relatives have a human right to come and join him — that’s just the rule of law.
So long as someone already in Britain is pleading their right to family life, their family will almost certainly get in.
Is the ruling so sweeping though? It isn’t mentioned here that the “anchor man” was already in the UK since 2007 and a British citizen. Would this Article 8 reliance mechanism also apply if that wasn’t the case and the “anchor person” was an immigrant who had a right to remain in the UK (i.e. due to asylum being granted/long-term residence etc.)? Skipping over these details makes this article seem click-baity and not very helpful in terms of having a sensible discussion on the ECHR and immigration generally.
Another thing I noticed reading articles elsewhere and not mentioned here: this anchor person was a brother of one of the parents of the family – that does seem like a very broad interpretation of the right to family life. I think my sister is great, but saying that my right to enjoy a family life depended on my being close to her is absurd (which is fortunate because she lives in England and I’m in Austria).
‘The court was told there had been no face-to-face contact with the brother for 17 years but they had remained “close”.’
Daily Telegraph 12 February 2025
The only conclusion a sane person can possibly reach is that all these politicians are lying and that the real objective is to pave the way for further globalisation by completely transforming Britain into a damper version of the Lebanon with all that that means for social solidarity and cohesion.
Fair assessment.
While normies were busy scolding Nigel Farage for drawing attention to small boats, Boris Johnson was quietly letting in millions of legal migrants. This would be destabilising enough if every legal migrant was a net contributor to public finances, but they don’t even pass that test.
The charitable explanation is that the government have GDP monomania, without a care for public finances or GDP per capita, because they’re desperately trying to keep the show on the road.
A truer explanation is that they’re maximising the short-term profits of well-connected corporations, rather than the long-term welfare of British citizens.
The truest explanation is that a free, prosperous and socially cohesive Britain is a threat to their plans for totalitarian world government. The same applies in all Western countries, which is why we’re all being subjected to the same treatment.
Only desperate and divided people would willingly submit to authoritarian government from afar. So they’re steadily impoverishing us – making food, energy and housing artificially expensive – while allowing widespread crime and maximising the number of distinct subcultures and opposing interest groups.
the government have GDP monomania,
What appears mildly encouraging is that mainstream reporting seems to have woken up to te difference between GDP and per Capita GDP and articles are increasingly dismissing the former and concentrating on the latter.Witness todays 0.1% growth for 2024/q4 (well within the bounds of statistical and data collection error-basically we’re flatlining at best)which has been reported as a fall in living standards.Hopefully the message will get through before its too late!
“The truest explanation is that a free, prosperous and socially cohesive Britain is a threat to their plans for totalitarian world government. The same applies in all Western countries, which is why we’re all being subjected to the same treatment”.
This is truly absurd. Who is going to be in this world government? Kier Starmer? Olaf Scholz? Emmanuel Macron? Presumably Xi Jinping would be leading it? Why would these people give up the power that they actually have at the moment? That isn’t a single shred of evidence that anything like this is happening; international bodies are between weaker and weaker.
The more conspiracy theorists come out with this absurd nonsense, the easier is for people pursuing effectively open border policies because of their obsession with something dubiously called “international law “.it is. Denmark is a European country. It has a Social Democratic government. It has radically reduced immigration of all kinds. It can be done.
It’s not difficult. You just make Britain a less attractive destination for migrants than other destinations. We shouldn’t ask why they come here from Gaza. We should ask why they come here from France!
The obvious solution is to hold all asylum seekers in secure refugee camps, well away from population centres. Your family can join you there, but it might not be a step up from where they are now, and it certainly won’t be a step up from the many countries they cross along the way.
Bad weather, bad food, no jobs, no hope – Scotland would be ideal.
Outer Hebrides?
We shouldn’t ask why they come here from Gaza. We should ask why they come here from France!
Thank you!!
The one question never asked, not once, leading to, during, and after the referendum. Why cross the most visited tourist destination in the world, good food, wine, climate, to then risk life and limb in an inflatable to come to our rainy overcrowded floating car park?
Ask the questions, listen to the answers, implement the solutions. Until then, all politicians are pretending.
To be fair if you are actually alert this question is asked on numerous occasions! The fact that it isn’t answered by our ruling politicians is another matter. How could they honestly answer this? It would show that every tie up immigration and board of control policy is a complete shambles.
France of course has numerous immigrants of its own. But it does have a somewhat tougher line than we are on booting out illegal migrants, a list obsessive about following the ruling of every single judge interpreting “international law”
Gazans should not be in France or Britain.
They come here from France because you can’t get anything at all in France without a carte d’identite.
No doubt the judge in question has a nice gaff in Hampstead or Richmond. That’s where we need to put the migrant accommodation. These people will go on making selfish decisions until we force them to confront the consequences on their own doorsteps.
Lovely idea, but not just in such locations; make judges and politicians who support this lunacy take them into their own homes. After all, charity begins at home. 🙂
Point the paedos towards Dulwich college. As soon as one rich kid gets culturally enriched, they’ll do something.
I was unaware of the prisoner votes issue mentioned in the article, interesting to learn about that. So, after a hasty google, it seems that the ECHR ruled that a blanket ban on prisoner voting was not OK, and the UK ended up allowing prisoners on remand or doing non-custodial sentences to vote, but limiting to that?
Based on that, presumably they could legislate that “right to family life” extends to only an individual’s children under 12 or something similar, and that would be good enough.
To be honest, though this ruling makes me think that the ECHR really should be ditched, since there is clearly a highly ideological group of lawyers and judges who will bend whatever law is in place in order to enact their apparent bonkers belief that Britain should accept literally anybody who feels like coming, no questions asked (how very dare you!).
We should pass legislation to say the anyone who depends on the “right to family life” argument in order to avoid deportation accepts that all family members, down to 6th cousins will be deported with you. You can enjoy your family life in your own homeland.
That also works for me.
‘A family deported together, stays together.’
Prisoner votes were opposed by Labour. After many years London announced a tiny change giving votes to remand prisoners who were already on the electoral register. Strasbourg rolled over at speed as they were frightened it would end up with the UK leaving the Convention and even the Council of Europe.
Meanwhile the Court’s jurisprudence took over the judiciary especially in Belfast which only now responds to Europe not London. Big conflict coming there. It’s the judiciary, stupid.
Whatever happened to the prudent use of the doctrine of the precedent.
https://legal.thomsonreuters.com/blog/the-doctrine-of-stare-decisis/#:~:text=The%20English%20common%20law%20of,absurd%20or%20unjust%2C%20in%201765.
Clearly, stare decisis has now been politicised.
“Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which covers the right to family life. If one man from Gaza gets into Britain, all his relatives have a human right to come and join him — that’s just the rule of law.”
It seems like every week there’s some new and astounding example of how deeply compromised and quite likely terminally ill Britain has allowed itself to become. To survive, the nation is going to have to stop destroying itself in willing penance for its Colonial past. (Psst. The Empire in many ways was a positive and civilizing influence in the world.)
There is too much legislation, national and international, covering rights. A major spring cleaning exercise is required at national and international levels.
Despite the mutterings on UnHerd, nothing changes.
Well this is perhaps because people writing on Unherd are not in government? UnHerd is a forum of political and cultural ideas, not a political party or activist organisation. The more people talk about these things the more likely they are eventually to have political influence. But, if you want to have a more direct effe y you need to join a party like Reform, and actually do some campaigning work! I suspect most of us can’t really be bothered.
Good idea. Import still more folk that despise the West, its people and its religions. That law is proof enough that the EU is folly.