This noise about how Britain may now stand against to the council's European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) is at best naive and in most cases (yes, you, David Cameron) is synthetic. What Cameron has done on this one is pretend this is the crucial line he won't cross. Meanwhile, very much more quietly and apparently without a moment of squeamishness (odd that, how selective the prime minister's stomach is on parliamentary sovereignty), his Government hands over more and more power to the European Union. What he has done by stirring up this prisoners' votes business is simply give the euro-anxious Tories a different kind of 'European' bone on which to chew. Yet this issue is not the meat. The ECHR and its decisions are not the things most endangering Britain's sovereignty now. Still, if MPs are really so determined to stop this so-called 'encroachment' by Strasbourg, maybe a technical note first. Britain freely (and foolishly) agreed long ago to give the court at Strasbourg all the powers that the ECHR has since been using. This so-called 'court' at has never invaded Britain -- the supine British opened the gates to all these European 'justices' and their powers to decide Britain's laws. All parliament has to do if it really does want to stop the powers of this 'court' is just vote to pull out of the Council of Europe, ECHR and all. Then this absurdity of votes for prisoners, and every other ECHR so-called 'human rights' absurdity, goes away; or at least -- and this is what Cameron is hiding in this debate -- until Brussels reminds the United Kingdom that by signing up to Lisbon Treaty and the rest, powers across the Channel can go on imposing these 'human rights' on Britain whether the UK tries to derogate from the ECHR decisions or leaves the Council of Europe altogether. The Lisbon Treaty, among many other poisonous things, gave the EU 'legal personality' for the first time. That means it can sign international agreements, not as an agent for a group of 27 sovereign states, but as a state in its own right. And as this new country called Europe, it is going to join the Council of Europe. It will be a member just as the United Kingdom is now. What that means is that Britain, even if it pulls out of the Council of Europe, will still be bound to the damned thing as a part of the EU: remember, Lisbon made us all 'citizens of the EU' now. If you are a native of England, Scotland Wales or Ireland, your nationality is now 'European' whether you want it or not. The treaty says so, and the treaty, thanks to the refusal by Cameron and William Hague to fight it, is law. Treaties and other international agreements now signed by the EU will be directly binding on the UK and have primacy over all UK laws and the British constitution. And, no, Britain does not have a veto over most of the things the EU might sign treaties on. Slightly delicious note: I gather the EU's signing for the membership has been held up because the EU is demanding that decisions of the ECHR cannot over-rule the decisions of the ECJ. In other words, Brussels is demanding that its own court have supremacy over the ECHR, something Britain has surrendered for its own Supreme Court. So there could be turf conflicts between the euro-courts. As Open Europe notes in its briefing this week on the votes for prisoners dispute, the EU has its own catalogue of justiciable rights -- '' 'the so-called Charter of Fundamental Rights, enshrined in the Lisbon Treaty. The Charter allows citizens to contest rights set down in EU law at the European Court of Justice, and, in future, possibly also the ECHR (when the EU accedes to it).' This will make it 'increasingly difficult for the UK to negotiate a carve-out from European human rights legislation.' As for the detail of this particular case of prisoners' votes, 'Withdrawal from the ECHR would allow the UK to ignore ECHR rulings on prisoners votes when it come to general elections. However, as voting rights in European Parliament and local elections are covered by EU law as well as national law, their application in the UK could in future be challenged at the ECHR or the ECJ.' Oh, and as for the Cameron fudge about limiting the vote to prisoners serving four years or less, the ECHR has already struck down that notion in a similar case, Scoppola v Italy. It decided that the prisoner's rights were violated because Italian law barred him from voting on the basis of his sentence. So they will knock down Cameron's four years, too, and I'd suspect he knows it. So the MPs might as well go home; or go around to the 'Scrubs for a bit of canvassing. 
10 February 2011 1:32 PM
Votes for prisoners:
how David Cameron is hiding the truth
about European power over 'human rights'
Share this article:
Friday, 11 February 2011
Yeah, yeah, yeah, rhubarb, rhubarb, order in the House, 'physically ill' and the rest of it. All I can say to the Commons over this votes for prisoners dispute is: just shut up and pull the trigger and get out of the Council of Europe. Or admit you are too timid to pull the trigger, so shut up anyway and submit in the manner that suits men who are cowards.
The angry cries, even among my colleagues, that there has been 'remorseless undermining' of Britain's parliament and courts implies that the ECHR has been tunnelling away under the stone walls of Britain, rather in the manner of medieval seige warfare. It hasn't. The ECHR has done only and exactly what decades of euro-supine British politicians have allowed it to do. The drawbridge has been down all along, with 'We are all Europeans now' written on cloth-of-gold and slung from the battlements.
Cameron, being so very busy having a public relations-designed 'physcal illness' over the issue, won't admit that the problem with exactly this kind of control by foreign powers over
Britain's legislation will continue as long as Britain stays in the EU: even if Britain now refuses votes for prisoners -- and it won't; in the end, some man caught with 10,000 child porn images on his laptop will have the liberty to cancel out your vote -- ultimately the EU will have ways of getting the same decision reached in the European Court of Justice (the EU 'court,' this one in Luxembourg with the power to enforce EU law in member states). All that will be necessary is for some other ex-con lowlife to bring another case, this time in Luxembourg not Strasbourg.
Which is why the noise in the Commons over this is just noise. Either parliament is sovereign or it's not, and until the MPs vote to take Britain out of the EU, it's not: the 'legal personality' called the 'European Union' is sovereign.
Posts
Yes! I was waiting for at least one main stream media person to look honestly at Cast Iron's continuing Europhilia. This votes for prisioners is just fluff and nonsense. We cannot influence the outcome one iota. It's an EU fait accompli.
Posted by: Ethan | 11/02/2011 at 03:35 PM
I think that the UK should persuade the other member states of the Council of Europe to amend the European Convention on Human Rights so that voting rights can be withdrawn from convicted criminals for the duration of their sentences. Surely it would be worth a try before taking the drastic step of leaving the club and thereby weakening the only legal framework that defends fundamental rights and individual liberties throughout the whole of the European continent.
Posted by: Ben | 11/02/2011 at 03:21 PM
Mary, although I personally think that there is merit to arguments on both sides of this particular question, I fully agree with the substance of your piece.
Many prisoners have committed crimes that are so abhorrent that for them to have the right to vote seems perverse. On the other hand, not all prisoners have committed terrible crimes and perhaps giving them the link to an outside world by means of letting them have a vote is worthwhile. Anyway, I will leave that to others to debate as, in the big scheme of things, it doesn’t much matter whether approximately 80,000 prisoners have the right to vote or not.
My issue is that this is an obvious attempt at misdirection on the part of Cameron. While he gets kudos on fighting this issue – which by the way will probably result in him saying that, we tried our best but we couldn’t stop the big boys from doing what they wanted – he will continue to surrender rights in other more important areas.
What matters is the overall whittling away of the power and responsibilities of parliament and whether we have the right to expel criminals from other countries, whether we have the right to protect our citizens from “fishing expeditions” from foreign jurisdictions and whether in fact we are responsible for ourselves and our heritage.
A further point is, why do we have a parliament? Has it now become primarily an enforcement branch of the EU? If it has, then as its responsibilities have been reduced, why not reduce the headcount? Surely a total of 200 MPs is sufficient to give a parliamentary blessing to EU diktats.
Posted by: John Savage | 11/02/2011 at 02:01 PM
Hi Mary,
Thank you again for another right-on-the-money article. It is interesting that Dominic Grieve, the UK's knock-kneed Attorney-General quaveringly pointed out in the Parliamentary debate that Britain would be acting 'tyrannically' if MPs simply rejected the ruling of the ECHR.
Listen up Grieve - MPs are voted for by the people and make laws as part of the democratic process. Democracy is a bulwark against tyranny. Come and see me in my office if there is any part of this your legally-trained mind cannot understand. Don't worry - I will speak V - E - R - Y S - L- O - W - L - Y so that you can grasp the basic principle.
Guess what, Mary? While all of this is going, Baroness Ashton, the EU foreign panjandrum who would not recognise a ballot paper if she fell over it entering a Brussels restaurant, has been advising the Egyptian people to be sure to develop a 'deep democracy' at the end of their current turmoil.
Honestly folks - you could not make this stuff up. What is the connection between Ashton and those in jail - they are both criminals.
The EU approach is clear. Democracy is not important and it will be ignored. General Elections in the UK no longer matter as the wishes of the people will simply be over-ridden by the Brussels bureaucracy.
I am not advocating violence today but, ultimately, we are going to have to shoot these people. At some point, the British Army will have to get involved and I am confident that they will stand with the people.
Posted by: John V. Wright | 11/02/2011 at 01:50 PM
Interesting that the 'solution' of giving 'short term prisoners' the vote has already been struck down by the courts ! Strange that we have not been told this by either the MSM (who suggest it as an option) or more importantly the Prime minister who MUST have people advising him on the LEGAL OPTIONS available.
So he MUST know that he is selling the public a pig in a poke with the free vote !
Once again we have a government which is based on spin, lies and the desire to sell us further and further down the EU marxist superstate road !
Posted by: Dave M | 11/02/2011 at 01:33 PM
It makes you wonder why our politicians waste a whole day - plus - discussing something that in the end makes very little difference, they have passed most of our past history over to some un-elected european people who are not in any way favourable to the British - it's time to get out of europe and we will be very much better off.
Posted by: j hoskins | 11/02/2011 at 12:51 PM
What is there to hide.The uk is a signed up ,paid up, member of the club and it either abides by the club rules or leaves,that's it.
Posted by: Bill Clements | 11/02/2011 at 12:46 PM
Your excellent article encapsulates every reason why I vote UKIP.
Posted by: Number 6 | 11/02/2011 at 12:26 PM
Posted by: Timothy Melville | 11/02/2011 at 10:26 AM
Posted by: Timothy Melville | 11/02/2011 at 10:26 AM
Excellent analysis.
This article is already being quoted on some blogs, not attributed to you though Mary Ellen I'm afraid. But keep up the good work of exposing our duplicitous government and yes, put it on the front page.
Posted by: bobbyboy | 11/02/2011 at 10:12 AM
Thankyou Mary for a slendid assessment of the UK's predicament, about which the British media generally does not wanto or cannot grasp. Any chance of getting this article out to a wider distribution?
Posted by: David Lott | 11/02/2011 at 09:13 AM
Depressing but true . What a silage spreading load of treacherous corrupt scumbags we have posturing in the House of Fools talking shop . Unfortunately the British do not seem to care and the BBC (wash your mouth out with soap and water) would rather bore us to death with the Egypt saga .
Posted by: ADAMS | 11/02/2011 at 09:06 AM
Thank you for an honest assessment of this charade. Anybody with any sense knows that Cameron is just doing PR and that he knows personally that nothing really can be done. Cameron, and for me especially Hague, are two of the reasons why I have left the Tory party because of their continuing surrender to Europe. The prisoners' votes thing is another con to try and win Tory Eurosceptic MPs over. Cameron is a Europhile. End of.
Posted by: KJC | 11/02/2011 at 07:58 AM
Oh Mary Ellen why can't your articles be on the front page it might help a few more people to see the madness of the EU.
Posted by: Paul Elsworth | 11/02/2011 at 12:50 AM
Votes for prisoners: how David Cameron is hiding the truth about European power over 'human rights'
Regards ....................wasp indigenous brit .
Posted by: DARK DESTROYER | 10/02/2011 at 09:57 PM
I don't understand why the government of Gt Britain and Northern Ireland meekly tolerate another layer of parasitic government above their own. We can reflect on some very unworthy people who have had their financial futures secured courtesy of Brussels, and some who thought their future lay in Brussels but, thankfully didn't. Not only useless but corrupt to the core and bursting with those who assume money grows on trees. Probably the most wasteful cartel on the planet....out, out,out.
Posted by: Don Baker | 10/02/2011 at 09:27 PM
Bravura piece of writing, La Synon!
Let us hope that the filth that inhabits Westminster, the Guardian, the BBC can read the writing on the wall.
Posted by: Ghandi | 10/02/2011 at 07:47 PM
Thank you for explaining the issue even though the end result should and always will remain that Britain should leave the Europeans to it and get on with normal life. Unfortunately our self emasculated politicians ain't normal so it won't happen.
Posted by: W FERGUSON | 10/02/2011 at 07:46 PM
"Minumum possible to comply" - Government response.
"We will not comply" - only possible response.
Another brilliant article from simply the very best journalist here in Brussels
Posted by: Chris Gillibrand | 10/02/2011 at 07:45 PM
harry fredericks
If it were possible, I would e-mail you an acute sense of exaggeration. Or a bias-detector. I'd lend you mine, but sadly, on this blog, it 's in use almost every day.
Posted by: Tom | 10/02/2011 at 07:33 PM
Posted by: Peter Tuckey | 10/02/2011 at 07:13 PM
Great article. Why hasn't MES been given a regular column in the newspaper? We need this stuff to be seen by the millions of DM readers if we are going to get out of the EU?
Posted by: Martin | 10/02/2011 at 06:20 PM
An article written by a idiot with no understanding of law, history or ethics.
Posted by: Jim Woods | 10/02/2011 at 06:00 PM
Thank you for that, I do wish we, the British people,where given all this information. Keep up the good work and will be passing your comments on.
Posted by: Jan | 10/02/2011 at 05:49 PM