On BBC’s Question Time this week the former editor of The Sun, Kalvin MacKenzie, made reference to a decision he didn’t like by the European Court of Human Rights, and noted that “if there wasn’t a good enough reason for leaving Europe, that was a good enough reason for me.”
All well and good, but as the Chairman David Dimbleby pointed out the ECHR is a completely separate entity from the European Union. The two have absolutely nothing to do with each other. The European Court of Human Rights is the court that rules on the European Convention of Human Rights, which is a treaty that was signed by most European Countries in 1953, before the forerunner to the EU even existed. Norway, for example, is a signatory to the Convention, even though Norway is not and never has been in the EU.
Now most people in Britain would probably make the same mistake as Kalvin. And that’s not surprising; very few people in Britain know anything about the basic structure of the EU. We just don’t give a shit. But most people aren’t Kalvin MacKenzie. I find it pretty scary that the ex-editor of Britain’s biggest tabloid doesn’t know the difference between the the ECHR and the EU. No wonder tabloid coverage of Europe sounds like it comes from a bizarre parallel dimension.
March 14th, 2010 at 18:22
Although in “fairness”, when pressed he probably does know the difference but isn’t going to miss an opportunity to make a cheap political point by conflating the two (i.e. EU bureaucrats soft on child killers). Full credit to Dimbleby for pointing it out, I doubt many others would have.