Cameron Counsels Europe

27th January, 2012 by Lorna Gledhill

Taking up the Chairmanship, on Wednesday David Cameron addressed the Council of Europe and gave eurosceptics in his party something to be cheerful about. Unsurprisingly steering the debate towards the repatriation of powers from Brussels, Wednesday’s victim was the European Court of Human Rights.

In a somewhat shaky speech, Cameron’s rhetoric swung from painstaking flattery to hard-nosed individualism, both praising the ECHR whilst accusing judges of disrespecting legal decisions made at a national level. Seemingly in, then out, Cameron’s speech resembled a political hokey-cokey.

It is clear that the Conservative leader, like every one of his predecessors, has been unable to rectify the rifts in his party when it comes to European participation. When a politician is representing such marbled opinion, it is little wonder that today’s speech was quite so ideologically garbled.

This is not to say that Cameron did not stay true to some of the cornerstones of a traditionally Conservative attitude towards the powers of the European Union. Echoing sentiments expressed in the Daily Mail and the Telegraph, he bemoaned the “flood” of minor cases that have supposedly clogged up the Court’s ability to address the most ‘serious’ instances of human rights abuses. Both overburdened and unreceptive of individual nations’ capacity to prosecute, the picture he painted of the European Court of Human Rights presented the repatriation of powers as the only viable option to protect this “bastion” of human rights.

In something that frighteningly resembled Teresa May’s “Cat-gate”, the Prime Minister attempted to ridicule the bureaucratic failings that disables the Court’s capacity to distinguish between minor and serious cases of human rights abuses. Detailing the case of an individual who was suing a bus company for an uncomfortable journey from Bucharest to Madrid, he called for better regulation of cases of individual petition.

This criticism, according to Cameron, is only symptomatic of a “democratic anxiety” within the British public. Unfortunately, using ‘democratic’ as a placating affix is similar to the story of the Trojan horse. Disguising itself as constructive criticism, it paves the way for an attack from the inside. Apparently, the reform of the European Court of Human Rights is a “challenge we can meet together”, yet the ‘them and us’ of previous eurosceptic debates is all the more prevalent.

According to David Cameron, “Human rights is a cause that runs deep in the British heart and long in British history.” Our national character, defined by an instinctive “loathing of over-might authority” and love of freedom, has cemented our protection of human rights. In the words of Cameron himself, “no decent country should deport people if they are going to be tortured”; this would deny their basic human rights. However, whilst our border agencies and Home Office continue to deport vulnerable individuals back to countries that proceed to detain, torture and ‘disappear’ their citizens, Cameron’s claim just doesn’t run true.

Tags: Council of Europe, David Cameron, EU, Europe, Human rights