More seriously still, human rights law has been used to destroy control over the country’s borders. A series of court rulings laid down the right of illegal immigrants to welfare benefits — thus undermining the very basis of citizenship — and refused to allow the deportation of terrorist suspects to countries where there was any record of abuses of human rights. The ideas that rights in Britain depend on human rights law is grotesque. England, after all, is the cradle of Western liberty as a result of English common law, which held that everything was permitted unless it was prohibited. Now, only what is codified and court-approved can be allowed. … Continue reading Melanie Phillips