The Choice Between Democracy and Human Rights

The UK government is on a mission to restore the rule-of-law regardless of popular opinion. It's time to take The Sniff Test.

Two Paths to Prosperity

Government exists to make people better off. That could mean a lot of things, but there are two ways to pursue the aim. The first is to get government out of the way of people and the second to use it to rebalance the economic spoils.

The US is entering a period where politics trumps principle and the agenda is unashamedly to benefit America’s economic interests. People who believe in less government are coming to power to bring that about, because their commercial interests no longer align with government priorities. Much of the rest of the world is adjusting to this reality.

Meanwhile, the UK government is headed by a human rights lawyer focused on human rights issues, such as assisted suicide and ownership of the Chagos Islands. The Prime Minister is a passionate believer in the rule of law, to the extent that day-to-day politics appears to pass him by. He has a history of claiming not to have been informed, which has allowed him to dodge scandals.

An idealistic approach leaves others to fill the vacuum in day-to-day politics. Louise Haigh went rogue by some accounts awarding pay increases to train drivers and then upset an investor from Dubai. Starmer’s political fixer Morgan McSweeney dealt with her, but convincing the public he has a plan for Britain is a stiffer challenge.

Governments are elected to improve the lives of voters. The UK government is led by people who believe that is best done by bolstering international treaties and institutions. These are not the grounds on which they were elected.

What are Human Rights?

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted by the United Nations in 1948 and details 30 rights belonging to all people. That’s a lot and it’s hard to police and prioritise without turning to lawyers like Sir Keir. I’ll focus on the top three rights, laid out by Strummer, Jones, Simonon and Headon.

You have the right not to be killed

This seems straightforward. We distinguish between murder and the lesser crimes of attempted murder and bodily injury. Most countries curtail ownership of deadly weapons.

This right is at the heart of the assisted suicide debate. While people can choose to die, others cannot choose for them. The fear is that pressure will be brought to bear on the infirm and the expensive, to ease the burden on loved ones.

Assisted suicide aims to alleviate suffering. This means pain, but we are ever more aware that mental torture is at least as excruciating as physical. Anxiety and depression are brought on by social circumstances as well as chemical imbalances. Canada has allowed assisted suicide since 2016 and investigations in Ontario suggest that isolation and homelessness have triggered a small percentage of euthanasia deaths.

There is a parallel with gambling. For years, sports gambling was illegal in the US on the grounds that it risked corrupting sport. As a result, gambling was underground, untaxed and run by undesirables. The Supreme Court threw out the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act in 2018 and individual states legalised sports betting over the next few years.

As a result, we can compare states with betting to those without. Rates of suicide and bankruptcy rose faster in states that allow gambling than those that do not. Michael Lewis is investigating the issue and leaves us in no doubt that corporations target addiction. Their algorithms are smart enough to spot and exclude winning gamblers, but dumb enough not to know an addict when they bet way beyond their means.

A similar situation may develop with assisted suicide. Many doctors consider it contrary to their oath and there may be high demand for the few willing to provide assistance. I foresee tabloid headlines exposing these Dr. Deaths and their marketing agencies targeting the vulnerable on Facebook. The legalisation of taboos has hidden consequences once powerful commercial forces get to work.

While we have the right not to be killed, our right to decide when to die is less clearcut. But pushing this agenda is on message for the UK government.

You have the right to food money

The right to food money follows on from the right not to be killed. Food and shelter are prerequisites for survival and a society that denies them is inhumane. Citizenship is conferred by society, while humanity is universal. This reasoning allows food and shelter to be given to immigrants and, on occasion, those starving overseas.

Yet the priorities of government are decided by society. This includes what rights citizens have and to whom we extend them. I studied philosophy and didn’t find a satisfactory explanation for why rights exist, other than that a majority of people agree with them. Rights are universal only to the extent that someone protects them.

It has become fashionable not to judge other cultures and to afford them the right to co-exist. If this is because we cannot judge them, this means there are no universal rights. If it is because everyone has rights, then we must be able to punish those who do not uphold them. There is no logical argument for funding cultures whose beliefs clash with our own. Yet this continues to be UK government policy.

You have the right to free speech

Our first two rights address physical deprivation, while free speech appears to be about mental anguish. The original idea is attributed to Athenian democracy, but this is the justification for the Enlightenment and its supporters seeking a lineage to rival that of the Church. Socrates was executed for sedition based on what he said. That’s a significant qualification of free speech and the right not to be killed.

There is an argument for free speech that every view contains a kernel of truth and listening to people broadens our understanding. Knowledge advances with open criticism and from here comes the idea that human progress depends on free speech. The fashionable push back is that hate speech serves no purpose and causes greater harm to the listener than benefit to the speaker. In principle this makes sense, but in practice it collapses because it allows the listener to determine what is hateful.

Once again, it is society that interprets this right and what is and is not acceptable. It gets messy to qualify free speech because someone has to do the qualifying. When the police spend money investigating a British journalist after a Dutch person takes offence at a tweet, we prioritise the right not to be offended above free speech and extend it beyond our shores.

Sir Keir’s Confusion

Keir Starmer was inspired into politics by the European Convention on Human Rights. This anecdote and the purpose of his government, is spelled out in a speech by the Attorney General. The mission is to rebuild Britain’s reputation as a leader in the field of international law, strengthen Parliament’s role in upholding the rule of law, and promote a rule of law culture.

The enemy is populism, defined as anyone who attacks judges, lawyers, non government organisations (lobbyists and charities), parliament, the academy (educators) and the civil service. Regular readers of The Sniff Test know I take pot shots at several of those, because I believe that no one is above criticism. The country’s senior solicitor disagrees.

The UK is handing back the Chagos Islands because it is upholding international law. British interests take a back seat to what is right. The Attorney General explains that what is right is best determined by international laws decided in the aftermath of the Second World War. People were wiser at that time because they had lived through its horrors. Is there a role for democracy in updating opinions?

The Attorney General argues that democracy cannot exist without free speech, guaranteed by access to the courts and independent judiciary. He continues that the rule of law requires democracy because of the legitimacy that bestows on the laws passed in parliament. The law depends on democracy and democracy on the law.

This is a circular argument of the kind that returns an error in a spreadsheet. He argues that support for the rule of law will be renewed by rebuilding the political consensus supporting it. By extension, that means if that support is not forthcoming, then the principle should be rejected. But populism is disallowed because it is against the rule of law.

I am a firm believer that we need laws to protect rights in our society. These are proposed by our leaders and we have the option to reject them every five years. We rejected the incompetence of the Conservatives and unwittingly elected an internationalist approach. The Labour party manifesto spoke of the shared beliefs of collective national purpose. Its five missions made no mention of its deeper agenda.