Britain Leading the Way
Britain abolished capital punishment comparatively early, in 1965, but the topic periodically resurfaces in the wake of some violent atrocity. This time, it was a murderous attack on a children’s playgroup in which three girls were stabbed to death. The perpetrator, Axel Rudakubana, received the maximum possible sentence of only 52 years in prison.
Journalists and commentators are now debating problems of effective deterrence, rehabilitation, prison statistics, and the right to life. But what this self-important discussion always overlooks is that the UK is not permitted to reinstate the death penalty.
It is significant, therefore, that this time, the calls for a “national debate” came from the Reform Party’s Rupert Lowe and Richard Tice. Meanwhile, Lee Anderson posted an image of a noose on X with the comment, “This is what is required.”
Reform’s leader, Nigel Farage (‘Mr Brexit’), has built a career on exposing the extent to which national sovereignty has been eroded by foreign governance. Thanks to his movement, a growing proportion of British voters are now driven not by policy matters but by doubts over leaders’ ability to enact laws at all.
The UK still reacts with indignation at the Conservative government’s £700m failure to deport illegal immigrants to Rwanda, and bristles with admiration for the ‘can-do’ attitude of President Trump as he succeeds in a similar deportation scheme on the other side of the Atlantic. With 55% in favour of the death penalty, now is the time to strike. With Farage in the fray, any effort to brush the question of ‘can we?’ under the rug of ‘should we?’ will fail.
The obstacle to both capital punishment and the Rwanda plan is the Council of Europe.
What is the Council of Europe?
The UK left the European Union in 2020, so it no longer has to answer to the European Court of Justice, the Council of Ministers, or the European Parliament.
But it remains a member of the Council of Europe, which it helped establish in 1949. Headquartered in Strasbourg, the Council’s membership includes countries such as Turkey and, until 2022, Russia. Members must meet the group’s collective standards of democratic freedom and human rights. The European Court of Human Rights adjudicates allegations of state failure to meet these standards.
In 1953, the Council passed the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), which progressively abolished the death penalty, decades after the UK’s abolition, and finally abolished it entirely in 2003.
Britain’s long tradition of civil liberty and freedom under the law is antithetical to Europe’s constructed concept of human rights, which assumes that the state grants these rights in the first place.
There is little political gain to be had from membership of an organization the UK founded, nor any sense that Britain would descend into violent barbarism without it. In short, Britain is among the likeliest to dismiss the ECHR in principle, having both a historical place to run to and a sense of greater possibility under leaders prepared to turn their back on the very institutions which many of its European neighbours continue to uphold.
Apologists for the ECHR’s interventions are left to tread an increasingly tricky line: persuading the British to kowtow to a European court for diplomacy’s sake, while European leaders deplore the Brexit movement, increase pressure on the UK with migrant arrivals, and make scarcely veiled economic threats toward London, whose political future hangs in the Atlantic balance.
Ironically, it is the effort to codify human rights that directs public discussion to the extreme of capital punishment, when myriad more practical, productive, and arguably virtuous solutions could otherwise be on the table.
Once the obstacle of human rights is removed, someone like Axel Rudakubana could become a disposable asset within a penal system where he would be both simple to manage and easy to dispose of.
It shouldn’t be assumed that the 32% of Brits who are still anti capital punishment are motivated by humanitarian concern for the convicted.
Sovereignty On Trial
It was in June 2022 that the European Court of Human Rights issued its ruling blocking the deportation of illegal immigrants to Rwanda due to a perceived risk that they could be subjected to inhumane treatment upon arrival. Labour’s scrapping of the policy after it had already proven unenforceable smacked more of impotence than magnanimity. The smell of blood is in the water.
Meanwhile, Farage’s reputation in Washington now depends on living up to his standing as a political disruptor.
The essence of Faragian politics is the use of simple, emotive objectives as a vehicle to remove complex obstacles and broaden the options available to legislators. Fifty-five percent currently support the death penalty, and it's no mere coincidence that Reform intersects with this lobby almost entirely. Suppose Farage can use this mandate to paint the government into a corner, defending a foreign judicial interest against its own country. In that case, the issue of capital punishment will quickly be forgotten.
And if Britain can find a way to surrender to the status quo of its own humanity, rather than the coercion of a foreign court, both sides of the death penalty debate will likely find great satisfaction.
Alexander Shaw
Journalist
