... the thing with the Davis-Raab approach to civil liberties is that the critique has no organising principle. Other than heady and misty invocations of Magna Carta, it does not see the need for any overall legal framework that enables the citizen to rely on their rights against state power.For, although there can be sincere, powerful and passionate criticism of individual proposals, there is also a dislike of the legal instruments such as the Human Rights Act and the European Convention on Human Rights that can check government abuse in any systemic way. Such Tory civil libertarianism wants the benefits of a libertarian approach to policy in certain (usually populist) cases without the means of placing such libertarianism on a sustainable basis.
Tories and civil liberties: the fascinating appointment of Dominic Raab
