Really good quote from a barrister over on Twitter called Steven Barrett. He’s pointed out that a nation, whether Britain or any other democratic nation, can be ruled either by politicians who are subject to the will of the people, or it can be ruled by treaties between governments.

I must admit that my preference would be that nations and the citizens or subjects within them decide for themselves about how their nations are run and how politics is conducted. Otherwise it is treaties, often put together to tackle problems that either no longer exist or where the situations are markedly different from when the treaties were made. For example: Both the Refugee Conventions and the Statelessness Conventions were brought in in the context of the world shortly after World War II. It was probably envisaged at the time that these conventions were first mooted that things like rights of asylum would be taken up by by thousands of people rather than millions. Rules regarding statelessness were put together in the context of the then recent history of Hitler’s Germany removing citizenship rights from Germany’s Jews. The world has changed radically since then. There are now far more people who could put together plausible, if bogus stories, about being ‘oppressed’ in their home countries in order to get a better life in the West. There has also been no Hitler redux but Statelessness rules have had the effect of encouraging illegal migrants to destroy identification documents to hide their country of origin in order to prevent deportation from places like Britain.

Rule by treaty not only strikes me as a stupid way to manage a nation, especially as many of the conventions were written for a time that has long past, but is also a way that is profoundly undemocratic. Personally I’d rather be ruled by democracy rather than treaties that are not fit for the modern world and which were signed by politicians long dead and for situations that no longer exist.