Stung by the young Raab, Sir Nicolas lost his mental footing

RSS Feed

Stung by the young Raab, Sir Nicolas lost his mental footing

March 14th, 2012

FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda

By
Quentin Letts

PUBLISHED:

18:58 EST, 13 March 2012

|

UPDATED:

19:05 EST, 13 March 2012

First, a small atrocity to report. Speaker Bercow yesterday helped a knot of Lib Dem MPs trying to torpedo the Government’s Health Bill. He did not have to – his move was possibly unprecedented – but he called a Lib Dem amendment to a Labour motion in an Opposition day debate. Forgive the technical talk.

Hours earlier the Speaker’s politically active wife, Sally Bercow, enthused wildly on her Twitter feed about that very Lib Dem amendment. So we had a Speaker using his powers to do something which, evidently, would please the woman who sometimes sleeps with him.

I wonder what the Commons clerks make of this turn of events. Did Mrs Bercow duly reward her little man?

Visit: Sir Nicolas Bratza, president of the European Court of Human Rights

On to my main item of business: a visit from an important man! Sir Nicolas Bratza is president of the European Court of Human Rights, that most opaque of bodies which keeps throwing a spanner in the cogs of British justice.

Yesterday he came to Parliament to appear in front of MPs and peers on the Human Rights Committee. It was a rare descent from Mount Olympus.

Sir Nicolas, half-Serb, half-British, was accompanied by his registrar, one Erik Fribergh. Before the meeting they sat in the corridor outside, next to one another, not talking. Herr Fribergh, long-limbed, untidy hair, was burrowed deep in paperwork.

A committee aide invited them to enter the room. Sir Nicolas, patting a thick palm over his 1950s-style head of grey, swept-back hair, walked in with a hefty gait. It was the step of a stiff gent accustomed to respect, averse to being hurried.

Herr Fribergh (Swedish, bespectacled, small chin) delayed, busying himself with a couple of hurried alterations to some legal text before scooping up his documents. Shades of a crow gathering its wingtips. With that he scuttled in to take his seat beside ponderous Sir Nicolas.

Hywel Francis (Lab, Aberavon), chairing the event, opened with what, to my naïve ear, sounded a mild question: would Sir Nicolas encourage other members of his European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) to have a dialogue with their national parliaments? One expected the august ancient to reply ‘sure – why not?’ One was wrong.

Sir Nicolas went into a long, defensive spiel. He was content for ‘parliamentarians to follow developments’ at the ECHR. Well that’s big of you, guvnor. But – Sir Nicolas gave a small, pained sigh and closed his eyes – ‘we should be seen to be protected from political pressures’. If judges were to speak to anyone, they would prefer it to be other lawyers.

Eurosceptic: Conservative MP Dominic Raab

The answer had taken an age. Mr Francis looked a bit pop-eyed. Over to Tory eurosceptic Dominic Raab (Esher and Walton). Clever. Knows his way round the law and keeps calm even when sorely provoked. Mr Raab probed Sir Nicolas over the ECHR’s support for giving prisoners the vote. Herr Fribergh stared weirdly at Mr Raab, as though inspecting a beetle.

Sir Nicolas briefly lost his mental footing. He carelessly said that the court had ‘invented’ a right. It stung him to be pricked by young Raab. Richard Shepherd (Con, Aldridge-Brownhills), beside Mr Raab, started muttering about the sovereignty of Parliament.

Veteran lawyer Lord Lester (Lib Dem) came to Sir Nicolas’s aid. Mike Crockhart (Lib Dem, Edinburgh W) was less congenial, drawing another boob from Sir Nicolas over the nature of ECHR judges. Sir Nicolas admitted that half of them were not even proper judges. Oops!

Herr Fribergh spoke just once. Rehman Chishti (Con, Gillingham and Rainham) had asked some question and suddenly the Swede was off – and unstoppable.

For five minutes he yodelled away. For all I know it may have been a single sentence. It reminded me of Lucky’s speech in ‘Waiting for Godot’ – i.e. a stream of incomprehensible nonsense.

Erik with a k stopped as suddenly as he had begun. ‘I tink I hof answered da kwestion!’ he snapped. Mr Francis, coming round, praised him for giving a ‘complete’ answer. Lovely Aberavon irony.