No going back

The ominously titled Justice Secretary, Jack Straw, claims he is as frustrated as anyone about the way the Human Rights Act has become a sort of "villains charter".

He suggested that the rights in the legislation, which enshrined the European Convention on Human Rights in British law, could be balanced with new “responsibilities” to obey the law and to be loyal to the country.

First of all, it's not as if Straw wasn't warned that this would happen. There were plenty of people telling him that such legislation would bring about exactly the sort of thing it has done - it's just that Straw chose to ignore these warnings 'cos he knew better.

Secondly, having conceded that it doesn't work the obvious thing to do would not be to bring in new legislation to try and counterbalance it - that would just complicate matters even more as the "law of unintended consequences" kicks in.

No, the obvious thing would be to get rid of the useless legislation that he introduced in the first place - but he won't.

This is the thing with progressives - they will never admit that their shitty ideas don't work. When they fail it is always because of some "unforeseen" circumstances. So when their badly thought out education ideas turn out badly educated, semi-literate kids by the hundreds and thousands it's never the fault of the policy - just a problem with the way it's been implemented by the schools.

When crackpot social welfare schemes turn out generations of welfare dependent low-lifes it's never the fault of the policy - just a shortcoming of the way it's implemented by local authorities, and when their ridiculous human rights legislation makes it easier for criminals to escape justice it's never a fault of the policy - just the way it's been implemented by the courts.

Progressives never say they were wrong - or sorry even. And they never consider going back to how it was when things worked - imperfectly, maybe, but much much better than they do now.

This is always going to be the way with progressive politics - always thinking that more radical changes will make things better but always lurching from one disaster to the next and always making society more broken.

Cameron tells us that mending the broken society is his priority, but does he really mean it? Of course not - if he did then things like repealing the human rights act and withdrawing from the EU would be top of his agenda. They don't even register on his radar - because he is cut from the same cloth as the rest of this liberal progressive bunch of fifth rate political poseurs.

They're not interested in making Britain better for anyone but themselves.