Andrew Tettenborn | The Spectator columnists & writers

Why is the EU attacking Poland and Hungary in a crisis?

With Russian bombs harassing Kiev and Kharkiv, the two unsung heroes of Europe have been Poland and Hungary. With very little notice, they have between them welcomed, fed and accommodated well over a million refugees from Ukraine. This they have done gladly and without complaint. Yesterday the European parliament passed a ponderous 2,500-word resolution devoted to Poland and Hungary. An appreciation, perhaps, or even a vote of thanks? Not exactly. It was actually a call for the EU to take steps as soon as possible to block payment of EU budget and Covid recovery funds to both countries, and criticising Brussels for not having started the process earlier. Why? The background is that for some time both Hungary and Poland have been subject to pressure from Brussels, and legal proceedings in the European Court of Justice, for perceived failings in their internal judicial systems.

Ukraine should think twice before joining the EU

Volodymyr Zelensky certainly made big waves when he addressed the European parliament. In the ensuing debate last week, many MEPs made emotional calls for the EU to show its solidarity with Ukraine by accepting its application made a couple of days earlier for full EU membership. So did those outside: nine Baltic and eastern European states immediately supported the project, and Poland, the EU member with most in common with Ukraine and hitherto the most generous to its refugees, called bluntly for membership to be not only granted but fast-tracked. However, the fires of enthusiasm were quickly and unceremoniously doused by Brussels, with Germany and the Netherlands pouring cold water on the plan. Neither Ukraine, nor Moldova and Georgia, which both applied hard on its heels, should receive special treatment; all should queue up and patiently wait their turn.

The Putin apologists of the European parliament

Never underestimate Vladimir Putin, and certainly never underestimate his advisers. Well before the first Russian rockets exploded in metropolitan Kiev, he had achieved a major foreign policy success by sabotaging the EU’s ability to present a united front against him. Ever since the days of Gerhard Schroeder, Russia had deftly weaponised German politicians’ commitment to Ostpolitik and German people’s desire for a comfortable bourgeois life, and this undoubtedly paid off. Before the invasion the EU’s paymaster was less than enthusiastic about sanctions when reminded of the sunk costs of Nord Stream 2 and its short-sighted but temporarily lucrative decision to depend both on Russian gas and the profits it made by selling the machinery to extract it.

Why Boris is right to resist calls for tougher sanctions on Russia

Did Boris Johnson fail to put his money where his mouth is when it came to hitting Russia with sanctions? The Prime Minister's critics think so: they argue that the targeting of five Russian banks and three oligarchs as a response to Putin's invasion of Ukraine was too little, too late. These cries came not only from Labour, and from the Green party's Caroline Lucas (who scandalously accused the PM, without a shred of evidence, of wanting to appease would-be Tory donors), but from his own side. Tory backbencher Iain Duncan-Smith demanded a more general blacklisting of Russian banks and plutocrats, while his party colleague Nickie Aiken went so far as to suggest forcibly expelling oligarchs’ children from English fee-paying schools.

The human rights clampdown on free speech

On Wednesday, in a decision that ought to get a good deal more attention than it will, our Supreme Court said that it was unacceptable that the press should be allowed to tell us that someone is being investigated by the police. It confirmed that someone in that position, an international businessman being investigated over alleged serious irregularities and frauds, had rightly been awarded a five-figure sum in damages from Bloomberg when it entirely truthfully pointed out that fact. Known only as ZXC, the man, said their Lordships, had a reasonable expectation of keeping disreputable matters like that quiet, even if they became known. From this it followed that unless there was a positive reason to expose him, he must be given the right to use the law to suppress press coverage, since any other result would compromise his right to private life under the European Convention on Human Rights.

Brexit-bashing bishops could ruin the Church of England

When politicians take to preaching, we feel uncomfortable. When bishops take to politics and managerialism, the sinking feeling gets worse. Now it seems we should brace ourselves for more pulpit politics: a Church of England proposal suggests that church leaders could be appointed to full-time cabinet-style roles such as 'Brexit bishop' or 'Covid bishop'. These plans should seriously concern any Anglican well-wisher. After all, why would the appointments stop at Brexit and the pandemic? Knowing the C of E, it seems a racing certainty that if these proposals come to anything others would include matters like climate change and anti-racism. What about preaching the Gospel? Hidden within proposals for political bishops is a drastic rewriting of what bishops stand for.

The Church of England’s diversity mission has gone too far

Is the Church of England on a mission? It should be, of course. But it appears to have confused its purpose of preaching the gospel with seeking to make itself more representative. From now on, at least ten members of the House of Bishops, part of the General Synod, must be from an ethnic minority. This will help create a 'church that truly embraces people of global majority heritage at every level of its life,' says the Archbishop of York Stephen Cottrell. But it's hard to reconcile Cottrell's words with those of Paul to the Galatians: 'There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.' For the Christian, skin colour should make no difference in spiritual terms.

A Covid amnesty won’t save Boris Johnson now

Timing is everything in politics. Partygate showed the usually sure-footed Boris at his most careless and inept, dwarfing even his run-in with the Commissioner for Standards that cost him North Shropshire last month and (one suspects) helped lose him Bury South on Wednesday. But the British electorate can be very forgiving. When it elected Boris it did not mind too much about his tendency to get things wrong on points of detail, seeing him instead as the man who saw what had to be done, was honest about it and got on with the important part of the job. At the time the scandal broke about the ‘drinks cabinet’ at No. 10, Boris could have taken advantage of this. Imagine if he had quickly admitted to having taken his finger off the pulse and let down the voters.

Nicola Sturgeon’s disturbing attack on the rule of law

Lawyers with an awkward agenda can be a thorn in the government’s side in Scotland as much as in England. Last year, for example, they persuaded the Court of Session to refuse a green light to Nicola Sturgeon’s bright idea for a unilateral Indyref2; and in a much higher profile case a couple of years earlier convinced the same court that the SNP had unlawfully and quite unfairly botched its investigation into Alex Salmond. But the Scots legal profession is by tradition forcefully independent, if anything even more so than its English counterpart. Broadly, Scottish solicitors are regulated by the Law Society of Scotland, and advocates by the Faulty of Advocates. As well as this the Court of Session exercises an important degree of supervision acting through its Lord President (who, for the benefit of English readers, has a certain amount in common with the Lord Chief Justice).

Have we reached peak human rights?

After the Colston debacle, you might be forgiven for having missed the other legal story that broke this week. The European Court of Human Rights has dismissed the complaint in the Ulster 'gay cake' case, so the decision in favour of the baker will stand. In case you need reminding, seven years ago a Belfast gay rights activist called Gareth Lee asked Ashers, a high-class bakery, to produce a cake inscribed with the phrase 'Support Gay Marriage' for an event he was organising. The bakery owners refused, citing Presbyterian religious scruples, whereupon Lee sued for discrimination. He lost. Our Supreme Court held that he had not been discriminated against because he was gay (since the order would have been refused even if made by a straight person), and that in any case to make Ashers inscribe a cake with words they disagreed with would infringe their rights to freedom of speech and religion.

Julian Assange and the deep flaw in our extradition laws

You could almost hear the rejoicing in Whitehall on Friday morning when the High Court cleared the way for Julian Assange to be extradited to the US, rejecting a plea that he was too mentally frail. The man has, after all, been a thorn in the administration’s side for 11 years: 18 months contesting his rendition to Sweden, followed by seven embarrassing years holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy, and then two-and-a-half years in Belmarsh fighting extradition to the US on espionage charges. But there is one disquieting feature. The offences he is charged with in the US are not ordinary charges of criminality, like the accusations he faced in Sweden, but are essentially state crimes: in this case espionage and the betrayal of US state secrets.

The sinister side of Meghan’s court victory

Reading the Duchess of Sussex’s press release after the Court of Appeal upheld her privacy case against the Mail on Sunday, you might be forgiven for thinking of C.S. Lewis’s Last Battle. Meghan talked of her part in the fight between right and wrong, her brave struggle against ‘deception, intimidation, and calculated attacks’, and how she was taking on a tabloid industry that conditioned people to be cruel, profited from lies and pain, and had now broken the law. Well, up to a point, Duchess. The reality was much drearier. The articles in the Mail on Sunday told no lies, and were more a comment on Meghan’s apparent insistence on blaming her father for her difficulties following her wedding. The only cruelty and intimidation seems to have been that the MoS article was much less complimentary to Meghan than a fawning 2019 piece in America’s People magazine which had praised her for her compassion and sympathy for the underprivileged.

Poland steps up its legal fight against Europe

Poland's legal wrangles with Europe show no sign of ending. Back in September, the Polish Constitutional Tribunal determined that some parts of EU law might be contrary to the country's constitution. Now the tribunal has lit another firework: doing the same in respect of the European Convention on Human Rights (the ECHR). Is this just another round in the war between the European elite and the ruling political party, the PiS (which is cordially detested in both Brussels and Strasbourg)? You'd be forgiven for thinking so. Yet this latest wrangle is much more significant, since it opens up an entirely new front. The ECHR is separate from the EU; it and the Human Rights Court are under the control of the 47 member States of the Council of Europe, which consists of essentially every European country, inside or outside the EU.

The EU doesn’t understand Hungary and Poland

Rather like Germany with its ill-starred 'Drive to the East' in the 19th and 20th centuries, one suspects the EU is quietly regretting its keenness to absorb most of the states of eastern Europe in the early 2000s. If not, events in Poland and Hungary this week may well persuade them. For a long time, national governments in the older EU states have more or less willingly subscribed to two articles of faith: the complete supremacy of EU law over their national law, including their constitutions, and the unchallengeable power of the EU Court of Justice — not only to expound EU law but also to extend and develop it, and to determine conclusively how far the competences of the EU run. There are reasons for this surprising submissiveness.

Could the ‘Kathleen Stock’ amendment backfire?

The hounding of Kathleen Stock – who left Sussex university following a concerted campaign against her by trans rights activists – was a disgraceful indictment of freedom of speech on campus. But one remedy for preventing a repeat – the so-called 'Stock amendment' to the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill, now passing through the Commons – isn't the answer. Impetuous legislation is normally bad legislation; unless we think very carefully, we may end up with something ineffective or even counter-productive. At first glance, a simple ban on students piling in to demand the sacking or departure of professors on account of their politics or teaching might look good. Indeed, it could be defended very plausibly on the basis that it is up to universities, not students, to dictate what they teach and who teaches it, and that we need to protect that right.

The alarming human rights ruling on freedom of speech

‘You can’t libel the dead’ is burned into the consciousness of any serious journalist or writer. It provides much-needed comfort: however tactful you have to be about the living, once someone has died you can say what you like about them without getting sued. Or can you? Seven years ago the European Court of Human Rights dropped a worrying throwaway remark that this might be unacceptable because allowing untrammelled comment about a deceased person might infringe the human rights of his family. Last week, in a disconcerting decision that seems to have gone entirely unreported in the media (you can read the official report here), that same court built on its earlier suggestion and at a stroke gave publishers a whole new worry.

Poland’s top court has finally called the EU’s bluff

For many years, the EU has posed as a kind of overbearing imperial leviathan, which insists its law has to prevail over that of the states that make it up. Now its bluff appears to have finally been called: the Polish constitutional court in Warsaw ruled yesterday that some EU laws are in conflict with the country’s constitution. Understandably, Brussels is not happy. But what can it do about it? The background to all this is a spat between Brussels and Warsaw about whether Poland’s machinery for appointing judges to its own courts is EU-compliant. Brussels says it is not, because under it judicial impartiality cannot be guaranteed. This, it says, is contrary to EU law – and it has a judgment of the EU Court of Justice to back it up.

Sturgeon is playing politics in her fight with the Supreme Court

The Supreme Court judgment striking down a couple of Acts of the Scottish parliament has been greeted with typical outrage from the SNP. Nicola Sturgeon has been busy fulminating that she is now 'unable to fully protect children’s rights'. But the First Minister shouldn't be surprised by this legal defeat: there was little chance of it going any other way. In spite of Sturgeon's fury, the two Acts in question were not actually very significant. The more high-profile one sought with much fanfare to incorporate into Scots law a treaty little-known to most of us outside the progressive establishment, the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. The other was aimed at incorporating an even lesser-known treaty, an anodyne convention drafted by the Council of Europe called the European Charter of Local Self-Government and intended to encourage the promotion of localism.

How the Tories can redeem themselves in the eyes of the self-employed

Private members’ bills don’t normally make for exciting reading. They give MPs and peers a chance to let off steam if they have a bee in their bonnet, and more importantly to lay down fairly cheap political markers. Most sink without trace, since the government through its control of the Commons legislative timetable has an effective veto. But some are worth a second look. One such is Lord Hendy’s Status of Workers Bill, which got its second reading in the Lords last Friday. Currently, businesses love the idea of designating as much of their payroll as possible as self-employed independent contractors rather than employees. And not surprisingly: it saves them the problems of PAYE, providing such things as sick and holiday pay, following employment laws and looking after such people as employees expect.

The snobbery of Roy ‘Chubby’ Brown’s critics

In a few hours' time, comedy fans in Sheffield will take to the streets in protest. Their cause? Not Brexit, or climate change, but the decision to ban Roy 'Chubby' Brown from performing a gig in the city. Chubby, who is not to everyone's taste, is best described as the North’s answer to Bernard Manning or Jim Davidson. An earthy stand-up comic from Middlesbrough, he is perfectly prepared to talk, joke and trade raillery about race, religion and sexuality in a way few other performers are. This week, after 30 years of performing in Sheffield, he was told he is no longer welcome. Sheffield City Trust, which runs various leisure sites on the local council's behalf, summarily cancelled a planned performance by him in the city’s Oval Hall next year.

The Liberal Democrats have a dangerous vision for the City of London

Liberals have always set great store by laws and declarations. It was joked about Lord Loreburn, the liberal Lord Chancellor in the years before the First World War, that if told the Germans had landed he would immediately have taken steps to obtain an interim injunction from the Chancery Division requiring an immediate withdrawal. These days something similar seems to be happening as regards the Liberal Democrats’ approach to climate change. Last Thursday Ed Davey took aim at the City, which he has decided to add to the party’s growing list of climate change villains. In a curious interview with the Guardian he put forward a modest proposal to deal with the problem: his demands included an immediate ban on the listing in London of any new company whatever involved with oil, coal or gas, and the outlawing of any attempt to raise a loan, or issue any bonds, to finance exploration for any of these commodities.

A Scotsman’s home is no longer his castle

If you suggest to an English politician that your home should be your castle to use as you like, he will probably nod. Tell that to a member of the SNP ruling class in Bruntsfield or Kelvingrove, however, and they will take any such view as a challenge to be overcome. A couple of years ago, following a public consultation answered by a whacking 122 respondents, the SNP quietly changed Scottish building regulations. The new rules allow the government at a future date to order every homeowner in Scotland to install smoke detectors and other safety devices of a type dictated by it, whether they liked it or not. That date is now set for February 2022. Last week Scots householders were given their orders in the unequivocal, if bossy, style typical of the new model Scots bureaucrat.

Will Knowland, Eton and the problem with the teaching misconduct panel

When Eton master Will Knowland was sacked last year over anti-feminist views contained in a YouTube video which he refused to take down, alumni and others rightly called out Eton’s small-mindedness and intellectual conformism. If the best-endowed schools in the land can’t stomach unorthodox opinion, what hope for UK education generally? They were, of course, entirely right. But there is a further, more serious, side to the story. This week’s widely-welcomed victory by Knowland is not the end of the matter. Eton, as it was required to do when dismissing a teacher for gross misconduct, had reported the circumstances to the professional body for teachers, the Teaching Regulation Agency. The TRA was then obliged to consider whether to disqualify Knowland as a teacher completely, on the basis that his publicly-expressed views had brought the teaching profession into disrepute.

Britain’s duty to Taiwan

It’s not often that a brass plate sparks a diplomatic incident, as happened this week in Vilnius. Lithuania invited Taiwan to establish a ‘Taiwan representative office’ in the capital. Beijing told Vilnius that the name was unacceptable, and ordered the government to replace the word ‘Taiwan’ with ‘Taipei’ or ‘Taipei City’. Lithuania held its ground, whereupon Beijing withdrew its ambassador and simultaneously expelled Lithuania’s woman in Beijing. There is more to this, as you might imagine, than meets the eye. Since its election of a centre-right government last October, Lithuania has been steadily reaching out to Taipei. There are good reasons for this, not least its own very recent history of bullying by an overbearing neighbour.

Do we really need lectures from Unesco on our heritage?

You could describe the UK planning system as a giant whispering gallery where landowners, pressure groups and developers all seek to bend policy their way. One such group is Unesco, an organisation with an inveterate habit of telling the British administration what to do about particular places in Britain and threatening consequences if it is disobeyed. You may not have heard a great deal about it's behaviour: but recent events show that you should take notice of it. Under an obscure convention of 1972, the World Heritage Convention, Unesco nominates a number of world heritage sites from lists submitted by governments. There are currently about 1,000 of these; 28 are in the UK. Listing gives no status, but states pay a subscription and have a technical right to ask for international help in looking after such sites.

Lambeth’s children suffered because of the council’s war on Thatcher

As if Rotherham, Rochdale, Telford and other places were not enough, last week we had another local authority child sex abuse scandal, this time from Lambeth. The child sex abuse inquiry’s damning report concluded that for years councillors and local authority managers in the borough were too indolent, too concerned with politics, and at times too compromised with local pressure groups, to take steps to protect some of the most vulnerable children in their care. The sufferers, as ever, were the children. Meetings, inquiries and promises to do better from Lambeth and other councils up and down the kingdom are a certainty. But it may be time for some more blue-sky thinking. True, any decent state needs to look after the young, the old and the vulnerable.

The EU’s menacing rule of law power grab

Officially the European Union may be a union of sovereign states. But its Commission increasingly has the air of an imperial chancellery, or perhaps the headquarters of some vast conglomerate giving instructions to the directors of its far-flung subsidiaries. The Commission’s annual Rule of Law report, published last week, is a case in point. It is well worth reading if you want to understand the EU mindset. Nominally a report to the European parliament and a number of central institutions, essentially it is a 30-page memo reminding the EU27 that the rule of law is part of the EU brand — and ordering member states to uphold it without any backsliding. Each country also gets its own report card: ‘good effort’ for Germany, for example, but ‘serious problems: must try much harder’ for Poland and Hungary.

The EU will regret its legal onslaught against Poland

When European governments openly disobey courts, ears prick up. When two courts simultaneously contradict each other on the same day and descend into an unseemly shouting-match, all bets are off. Welcome to the mad world of Poland’s legal relations with the EU. The ruling Law and Justice Party in Poland, PiS, is cordially detested in Brussels. Its policies, which are quite popular locally, are anathema to the liberal and cosmopolitan Euro-nomenklatura. Back in 2017, PiS introduced technical changes to the terms of appointment of the Polish higher judiciary, including a disciplinary chamber with political connections armed with powers in certain cases to sanction judges. The measures were aimed at halting corruption.

Britain should resist copying the EU’s corporate responsibility law

Big corporations have a lot not to be proud of, and we certainly could do with laws to rein in some of their excesses. But that doesn’t mean that we should necessarily nod those laws through without a careful look. A case in point is the demand made in recent days for the government to follow an EU initiative and introduce a 'corporate responsibility' law. This would require British companies to vet their entire supply chains for, among other things, human rights violations. The EU scheme in question, based on a European parliament vote in March, is what you have to look at to see just what is being asked for. Its demands are both interesting and, shall we say, not modest. Large or publicly-listed undertakings must, under the Euro-proposal, be required by law to show 'due diligence' to prevent their activities contributing to adverse impacts on human rights anywhere in their supply chain throughout the world.

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