For generations, democracy in this green and pleasant land was a simple and sacred thing. We voted for Members of Parliament, and those MPs debated, legislated and steered the nation's course on our behalf. The arrangement was never flawless. Politicians can be dithering or occasionally useless. But they carried one indispensable virtue: accountability. Displease the electorate, and you could be voted out.
That settlement is now being quietly dismantled. An unelected judicial elite has taken hold of the levers of power, going over Parliament's head, vetoing the decisions of government and remaking policy with no democratic mandate whatsoever. Make no mistake, this is not a one-off glitch. It is a full-blown constitutional crisis.
Judges overruling the will of the people
Consider immigration. The British people have said the same thing over and over again, in the plainest possible terms: they want firm control of our borders. When the Conservative government tried to deliver it, judges informed them that Rwanda was an unacceptable destination for deportations. Not because Parliament had weighed the policy and thrown it out. Not because voters had rejected it at the ballot box. But because a handful of unelected judges had decided they knew better.
The same judicial overreach now reaches into our economy. Courts are increasingly dictating what businesses may pay their staff, who they should employ, even how long a coffee break ought to last. Who in their right mind would launch a business under such dystopian, whip-cracking, red-tape conditions?
The cost-of-living crisis ought to be met with economic policy and government action, decided by elected representatives doing the job we sent them to do. Instead, core decisions about how markets work have been seized by a judiciary that keeps wandering into territory that belongs to Parliament. It needs to be stopped.
The latest outrage: politicians gagged
Last week the judicial coup hit a new low. A Gazan family was granted entry to Britain under a scheme that had been set up explicitly for Ukrainians. Predictably, the ruling triggered a furious debate in Parliament, as well it might. Immigration policy is precisely the sort of thing elected officials exist to argue over, since it reflects national sentiment and the will of the electorate.
Britain's most senior judge saw things differently. The Lady Chief Justice, Lady Carr, pronounced it “unacceptable” for politicians even to discuss such rulings in Parliament.
Excuse me?
If our elected representatives are not permitted to scrutinise the very decisions that shape national policy, what exactly is Parliament for? Once judicial rulings are placed beyond debate, Britain has stopped being a democracy. It has become an oligarchy presided over by black-robed mandarins who answer to no one but themselves.
An activist judiciary off the leash
And let us be honest about the scale of it: this brand of judicial activism is spreading unchecked. Under the Tories there were the familiar fights with foreign courts, the meddling European judges who grounded flights and overrode our own Supreme Court, High Court and Court of Appeal. We all remember it well enough.
But now, emboldened by Labour's win, it seems even some of our own UK judges have dropped any pretence of impartiality and thrown themselves into interventionism with reckless abandon. In recent weeks the absurdities have piled up, among them:
- A judge granting a Cuban woman a visa to join her boyfriend in the UK, despite the small detail that he had already died.
- A judge decreeing that a Nigerian woman should remain in Britain because she had joined a terrorist group.
- A High Court judge striking down Conservative reforms designed to tighten incapacity benefit assessments, putting handouts ahead of accountability.
- A coroner ruling that the SAS had been wrong to eliminate IRA terrorists.
- A Jamaican drug dealer laughing off deportation, telling the judge he intended to carry on smoking cannabis, and being allowed to stay.
- An Albanian criminal escaping deportation because his son, evidently a young gourmet, disliked chicken nuggets.
- A Grenadian criminal dodging justice because her Latvian husband would suffer dreadfully from the loss of a diet ill-suited to Caribbean spices.
A loophole that isn't a loophole
To soothe the great British public, Keir Starmer says he grasps how ridiculous all this is and claims to be working to close the “legal loophole” exploited in the Gazan family case. There is just one snag: there was no loophole. The court itself accepted that, under the immigration rules as they stand, the family had no right to come to Britain. The judges nonetheless decided that their “compelling” Article 8 rights under the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) overrode British law.
The precedent is devastating. From now on, anyone abroad who says they are in danger and has relatives in Britain can wave the ECHR like a golden ticket. And with Attorney General Richard Hermer having already ruled out any challenge to the ECHR, that door will never be closed.
Is former Chief Prosecutor Keir Starmer in on the plan? One has to wonder.
Democracy, or rule by judges?
This goes well beyond any single case. It is becoming frighteningly routine. Activist judges are exceeding their remit, pressing their ideological views onto Parliament and chipping away at Britain's constitutional traditions. That is not the rule of law. It is rule by lawyers.
A working democracy depends on the people's elected representatives, not unelected judges, making the law and governing the country. Yet a creeping, American-style notion of the “separation of powers” is taking root. Let us be clear: Britain is not America. Our system rests on parliamentary sovereignty, not judicial overreach.
Parliament holds every card it needs to restore democracy. It can rewrite the law. It can abolish the Supreme Court. It can remove the Lady Chief Justice. It can, if it comes to it, pass emergency legislation banning all foreign chicken nuggets. Parliament is sovereign, and the authority of our elected representatives is absolute.
So Starmer must step up, and we, the people, must hold him to it. He has to stop unelected officials from trampling over British democracy. Will he? We are not holding our breath.
Join the fight for sovereignty
This is exactly why the Great British PAC matters. We are watching, and we are getting ready for 2029. We have set up a whistleblower depository for anyone who sees judicial activism in action. In 2029 the receipts will be opened and true democratic justice will be served. The statute book will be rewritten, and the slow handover of power to activist judges, QUANGOs and regulators who would rather rule than serve will be switched off for good.
Report activist judge activity at www.GreatBritishPAC.com/REPORT and join us in the fight to restore parliamentary sovereignty.
Britain belongs to the people, not the courts.
Join the Great British PAC at www.GreatBritishPAC.com
