> To British eyes, the whole process seemed bizarre. Rules had been drawn up in the clearest language that lawyers could devise. Yet, the moment they became inconvenient, they were ignored.

I find it very difficult to take this seriously coming from a Conservative MEP (I note the article makes no mention of his party affiliation), mainly because his party is proposing to do the exact same thing with the EU Convention on Human Rights.

To wit, the Conservative Party has upon numerous occasions frequently chosen to ignore their legal obligations, such as trying to deport people who have been charged with no crime on the basis of evidence gained under torture, denying some prisoners the right to vote, and retaining DNA of those arrested but not charged with a crime indefinitely. All of which are, according to the EU courts, illegal.

So when faced with these 'inconvenient' laws, the tories are proposing to ignore them, tear them up, and replace them with a 'British' bill of rights that largely duplicates what's already enshrined in EU law (a pointless exercise).

I also think it's rather disingenuous of the article to gloss over the fact that Daniel Hannan is not without his critics, and that his positions on issues such as immigration are not, in my view, particularly enlightened. I leave it to other commenters here to determine whether it's really 'racist garbage' (as someone else suggested), but whatever he's pining for something that simply doesn't and cannot exist anymore.