The Tories’ biggest trick is making their opponents fight post-Brexit policies in the courts | Anton Jäger

While progressives see the courts as a way to achieve justice, the government sees long legal battles as a way to galvanise support

It seems like every few months brings news of another defeat for the UK government in the courts. And there may well be more to come – the latest policy in the sights of lawyers and activists is the plan to process certain asylum seekers who’ve arrived on Britain’s shores in Rwanda in east Africa.

The policy was met with justified outrage from progressives and the left. Specialists also predicted that it would run afoul of international law and human rights legislation. But what if this was part of the plan all along? The Times columnist Clare Foges, writing under the headline “Rwanda won’t work: but it will for Boris Johnson”, wondered if the real purpose of the plan was not to actually reduce perilous journeys across the Channel, as the government claimed, but to draw progressives into extended court battles and lawsuits. This would force them to act as an explicit blockade on post-Brexit migration policies, frustrating the “people’s will” ratified by the 2019 election, and thereby galvanising Tory activists and potential voters.

This poses an uncomfortable question for the left: what if its increasing embrace of the justice system is not just a sign of political weakness, but rather a gift to the right?

Anton Jäger is a researcher at the Higher Institute for Philosophy at KU Leuven, Belgium

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from The Guardian https://ift.tt/nYQZKBk