The justice system is losing legitimacy. British mothers are being locked up for intemperate social media posts whilst men from the third world are able to commit multiple sexual assaults, claim they were simply “unfamiliar with UK laws regarding physical contact”, yet receive little more than a community order.
Those thirteenth century barons who met in a Surrey meadow, concerning themselves with the law of the Marches and the Honour of Wallingford, did not expect that the beneficiaries of the “liberties” articulated in the Magna Carta would be from the deserts of Sudan or the mountains of Afghanistan.
Their intent was safeguards for those rooted in the realm, for “all free men of our kingdom, for ourselves and for our heirs forever”. Not interlopers who purchased a discounted dinghy crossing via TikTok, or overstayed a student visa because they found a cash-in-hand job at a vape shop.
We need a course correction. The entire legal panoply bestowed to British citizens should not automatically extend to those who have been here for five minutes. The rot of the Human Rights Act and the ECHR must be replaced by a British Bill of Rights, with access contingent on citizenship, and citizenship alone.
The people of this country must have recourse to a set of rights and protections surrounding freedom of expression and access to higher courts that are not available to foreign nationals, whether here legally or not.
A two-tiered legal order. One that falls down hard on citizens of other countries who litter our streets with hate marches whilst calling for an “intifada”. One that enables the deportation of a foreign national offender upon conviction, not pending endless appeals.
The universalists in the current government will never entertain such an idea. These measures will have to wait, therefore, until after the general election.
But Labour urgently, desperately needs to show the electorate that their concerns about illegal migrant crime are recognised and legitimate — to risk any other course would risk exposing even further their weakest flank to Reform’s strongest. It is obvious, given first Yvette Cooper and now Shabana Mahmood’s rhetorically tough stance on illegal migration, that Labour know this. One way to shore up their position would be to change the law so that, for those found guilty of a crime, their illegal presence in the country is made into an aggravating feature during sentencing.
The judge’s remarks made during the sentencing of Hadush Kebatu — the Epping sex offender — suspended reality. No mention was made of the basic fact that such a crime only occured because of his illegal entry: the only reference to Kebatu’s immigration status was limited to the impact his crime had on his fellow lodgers in the Bell Hotel as a result of public protests.
Many defence lawyers are now making the claim that an outstanding asylum claim should actually be a mitigating feature during sentencing, claiming that PTSD during their (voluntary) journey to the UK makes the offending less severe.
When an individual in our country without permission engages in further criminality, whatever the offence, then the punishment must be heightened to befit the pattern of moral turpitude.
A guilty individual’s previous offences are already a statutory aggravating factor for this very reason. As too are crimes seen to be driven by beliefs and hostilities that have been so socially condemned that the law has been adjusted to meet these modern values. Criminality that is downstream of illegal entry is no different.
In July last year, a case in North London saw the nascent articulation of this very principle. Having found the foreign national Shwehe Ahmed guilty of robbery, affray, and possession of an offensive weapon, Judge Godfrey articulated a sentencing view that will be shared by millions across the country:
“In my view, it is an aggravating feature that you were in this country illegally when you committed these offences, having entered in a clandestine fashion, with a view to avoiding border controls.”
The individual received 15 months’ imprisonment, and whilst the precedent of illegal entry being used as an aggravating feature was later overturned by appeal judges, we can see that there are at least some in the justice system who recognise that the small boats crisis, and accompanying criminality, confront us with both a legal and ethical question.
To Joe Bloggs in the Red Lion, it is obvious that an illegal migrant should face greater punishment for crimes committed in Britain. Kebatu’s crime would not have happened, lives would not have been ruined, a community would not have been shaken, if he had not decided to enter Britain.
One has to wonder how many more Hadush Kebatus must unleash terror in our towns and villages before our septic political institutions come round to Mr Bloggs’ way of thinking.
