Pick of the week: The Tory Human Rights Act attack
The top five most read articles on Politics.co.uk this week.
5. Boris Johnson defends 'market forces' killing black cab trade
Boris Johnson had a rough ride at mayor's question this week. The audience was filled with London cabbies angry about the rise of Uber and other minicab apps. The London mayor, who used to actively court the taxi-driver vote, struck a rather more dismissive tone – suggesting that the decline of the black cab trade was an inevitable result of "market forces". Whatever you make of his argument, the sense that Johnson no longer cares for winning the approval of London voters was notable. His eyes are now set on a bigger prize.
4. Labour's choice is only between differing shades of Blairite
After a stuttering start, the race to be Labour's next leader started to get serious this week. Frontrunner Andy Burnham has been collecting endorsements from right across the party, while Liz Kendall is rapidly emerging as the one candidate who just might stop him in his tracks. But beyond the horse race, there is vanishingly little to separate the candidates politically. Are Labour party members really happy about the narrow range of candidates on offer this time?
3. Is this the most inane law of all time? Cameron promises to make illegal immigration more illegal
New figures out this week revealed that net immigration is continuing to rise. Rather than welcome this as a clear sign that the economy continues to be on the mend, David Cameron and his home secretary reacted by inviting the press to watch as they stood by while police dragged a few unlucky migrants out of the country. Cameron's other reaction was to announce a new law to make illegal immigration slightly more illegal than it already is. Not many people were convinced.
2. Never face a migrant in your household – the website which shows how low our debate on immigration has sunk
The consequence of the kind of posturing exhibited by Cameron this week is the continued debasement of public attitudes towards migrants. Once a term to describe those who move from one country to another, migrant is increasingly used in a way which suggests 'not human'.
1. Everything you need to know about the Tories' human rights attack in five minutes
One of the effects of the Tories' surprise majority is that the party now have to attempt to implement all of the policies which they had previously assumed would be bartered away during coalition negotiations with the Liberal Democrats. Their promise to scrap the Human Rights Act was top of the list of wild promises most likely to be binned by the coalition. Now they're going to actually have to go through with it.
Quite aside from the rights and wrongs of the policy, the huge number of hurdles which need to be jumped in order to bin the HRA, plus the possibility of a significant rebellion within his own party, mean this is one policy which looks almost impossible to fulfil. Our simple guide to exactly what the Tories are trying to do was our most read piece of the week.
