In this judicial dictatorship, it seems money talks and free speech walks, says author Mick Hume
The Human Rights Act allows elite judges to poke their noses into public issues
DO we live in a democracy or some sort of judicial dictatorship?
Our top judges appear to be acting as an unaccountable law unto themselves on issues that should be none of their business, from free speech to Brexit.
The latest case of judges getting above themselves involves another gag on press freedom.
Mr Justice Nicol has just granted a High Court injunction to a “very wealthy” businessman, to stop the newspapers revealing that he is under investigation for possible involvement in serious financial crime.
Which he is. Nobody doubts that this unnamed multi-millionaire has been questioned by police under caution, or that the Met has raided company offices he is connected with, making several arrests.
Those raids were even reported in the national and local press.
Yet the businessman, known only as ERY, has still persuaded the judge that his right to privacy should outweigh the newspapers’ right to report a true story of obvious public interest.
The actual persuading was done by ERY’s celebrity lawyer, David Sherborne, known for representing such impoverished victims of injustice as Hugh Grant and Cherie and Tony Blair.
Can anybody imagine a petty burglary suspect enjoying the sort of privileged access to a gagging order that the judge granted to ERY?
The law refuses, rightly in my opinion, to grant anonymity to those being investigated for alleged sex crimes, even if they are famous and have been exonerated, as Sir Cliff Richard has.
Yet Mr Justice Nicol insists that a businessman must remain anonymous because he is under investigation over alleged financial offences.
A case of money talks, free speech walks?
What excuse did the High Court give for granting the gagging order?
That ERY has a nursery-aged child who might be damaged by bad publicity.
This amounts to using families as human shields when attacking press freedom.
It is an open invitation to anybody with children and plenty of cash to apply to the courts to suppress true stories they do not like.
Judges then assume the role of parents to the public, deciding what news is fit for us kiddies to read.
These judicial assaults on free speech and the public’s right to know follow last week’s outrageous High Court attack on democracy.
Three top judges decided that their opinions must outweigh those of 17.4million Leave voters.
They found in favour of a few well-heeled Remain campaigners, and told the Government it could not press the button on Brexit without the permission of MPs and the Lords.
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Gleeful Remainers including gormless Labour MP Jess Phillips have been crowing: “This is what you wanted, UK courts to take back control.”
No. What millions voted for on June 23 was democracy — for the people “to take back control”.
Not for a few pompous beaks who are part of the EU elite to decide what’s best for the rest of us.
The notion that the judges’ anti-Brexit verdict was a defence of parliamentary democracy is one of the more bizarre arguments heard in a London courtroom.
Top judges, like their new entourage of Labour groupies, never appeared bothered when parliamentary democracy was being trampled on via the EU over the past 40 years.
They only seem moved to protect parliamentary sovereignty against the will of the people.
Defenders of democracy might also ask: “Who gave the judges such extraordinary powers in the first place?”
The spineless British political class has handed more and more authority to the courts.
It is New Labour’s 1998 Human Rights Act, for example, that empowers elite judges to poke their prodnoses further into big public issues such as press freedom.
Now those judicial chickens are coming home to roost.
We have heard a lot lately about the need to protect judicial independence.
Nobody wants to see judges acting as government stooges.
However, that precious “independence” also means the unelected judiciary is free from any democratic accountability.
Which is fine if they are presiding over ordinary legal cases involving individuals.
But not if they seek to sit in judgement on the whole of society, issuing edicts on which true stories the free press can report and telling 17.4million vulgar little Leave voters to be quiet while the three grown-up judges are talking.
If it please m’lud, or even if it doesn’t, hands off our hard-won democratic freedoms.
Mick Hume is the author of Trigger Warning: Is The Fear Of Being Offensive Killing Free Speech?