16/09/2026
https://tinyurl.com/2pprs8r5 Repealing human rights and equality laws may appeal to the political right, but some Christians have benefited. Be careful what you wish for...
There are serious proposals among political parties on the right to repeal the Human Rights Act and the Equality Act, and to withdraw the UK from the European Convention on Human Rights. I can see the attraction. With one legislative stroke — so they say — we can sweep away the Blairite woke nonsense, take control of our borders against illegal immigration, and curb the rise of Islamic fundamentalism.
Then we can restore — so they say — the idea of individual human responsibility over collective human rights. No more identity politics. Hooray! All of which — so they say — is impossible to do without repeal of the aforementioned laws. Who ‘they’ are, I’m not altogether sure, but ‘they’ are saying it, or at least that’s the gist of what they’re saying.
As I’ve already said, I can see the attraction. What we now think of as the ‘woke’ ideology was already simmering away before Tony Blair came to Downing Street. But there’s no doubt, it was greatly advanced under his administration, and it has been perpetuated by various governments of different political persuasions since. In my view, it needs to be pushed back.
I do also agree that a nation has — not just the right, but — a duty to maintain the integrity of its own borders, welcoming legal migrants while firmly rebuffing those who break the law. And I do think we need to take the threat of Islamic fundamentalism more seriously than we do. We don’t take it anywhere near seriously enough, partly because people fear a tap on the shoulder from the equality bureaucrats.
But be careful what you wish for. The idea that we can wind the clock back to pre-1997 is, frankly, for the birds. Laws do not exist in a vacuum. They were passed by Parliament precisely because those ideologies had already taken root so many of our public institutions. Education, the media, the civil service, the police, the NHS were (and still are) heavily influenced by the progressive movement.
Repealing a few Acts of Parliament — of themselves — won’t fix the issue. Nor will it be easy. You would need more than just one pair of policy tweezers to unpick all the interwoven threads of the equality and human rights tapestry that has been stitched together in the UK over the last quarter of a century. To put it bluntly, Britain is a very different place today compared to the late 1990s.
And more than that (please, hear me out) the equality and human rights laws haven’t been all bad. I don’t think I could be accused of being a namby-pamby liberal, but even I have to say that Christians have benefited from the Human Rights Act, the Equality Act, and the European Convention on Human Rights.
Let me give you a few examples. Do you remember the Northern Ireland bakers who were being forced to bake a cake with the words ‘support gay marriage’? They won their case against compelled speech, relying on… wait for it.. Section 3 of the Human Rights Act, which requires laws to be read in a manner compatible with the European Convention on Human Rights. It would be a shame to lose that legal precedent by repealing the Act.
Here’s another example. Do you remember the sinister and draconian law which the SNP Scottish government tried to introduce which would have given every child in Scotland a state-appointed guardian over and above the child’s parents? They chillingly called the state guardian a ‘named person’. It was enough to send a shiver down any parent’s spine. Well, that was thrown out by the Supreme Court on the basis of… guess what… Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
By the way, in that Supreme Court ruling, there was this delightful statement, ‘The first thing that a totalitarian regime tries to do is to get at the children, to distance them from the subversive, varied influences of their families, and indoctrinate them in their rulers’ view of the world. Within limits, families must be left to bring up their children in their own way.’ It doesn't add to my argument in this particular article, I just like to quote it every chance I get!
Back to this article, and here’s yet another example. Do you remember the sheer joy and relief when, in 2025, the Supreme Court eventually said what all of us have known for millennia, that a man is a man and a woman is a woman? Yes, it turns out a person’s s*x is biological not ideological. Hallelujah! What legislation was that ruling referring to?… wait for it... the Equality Act! If the Act is repealed, the Supreme Court judgment falls with it.
On top of that, we have a raft of free speech victories which have pushed back against the dreaded ‘cancel culture’ of our times. Think of those various Christian organisations who were banned from hiring public facilities, or that time a Christian charity was banned from advertising with Google, or those churches that have been banned from booking a stall at a university fresher’s fair. All of those bans were overturned, either inside or outside court, on the basis of the very Acts of Parliament which are being proposed for repeal.
You take my point. The human rights and equality laws haven’t been all bad. They work well when they are used a shield to defend the innocent. But — and on this I agree with those calling for repeal — they work badly when they are used as a sword to attack those who don’t belong to the progressive elite. I agree that these laws have generally expanded bureaucracy and, in some cases, prioritised group-based equality over individual liberty, freedom of speech, freedom of religion and freedom of association.
So, am I for or against repeal? Well, it depends. For my money, there would have to be robust protections against compelled speech, and robust protections for the rights of the family, and robust protections against ‘cancel culture’, and a robust definition of a man and a woman. Perhaps, a British Bill of Rights would be the answer, but that would likely open a can of worms. Yet, if our Parliament could get it right (stop sniggering) maybe I could accept the repeal of human rights and equality laws. But as I say, be careful what you wish for.
