HEADLINES OR PRINCIPLE?

by RAY FLEMING
DAVID Cameron has a very strange way of making policy.
On the one hand the Conservative leader has devolved responsibility for policy development on a very wide range of major issues to working groups which are due to make their recommendations in the course of the next year. On the other hand, as we saw yesterday, he launches policy initiatives on major subjects without any apparent in-depth study. It would be hard to name a subject of greater significance than that of how the human rights of the British citizen can best be safeguarded. Yet yesterday, with an insouciance quite inappropriate to the matter at hand, Mr Cameron said he thought Britain should have a Bill of Rights and that the existing Human Rights Act should be relegated to a lower level of importance. The rights and wrongs of Mr Cameron's proposal cannot be debated in the space available here. However, it is not unreasonable to ask why he did not remit the subject in an open way to a policy group, as he has already done for almost all other matters. Instead, his mind is apparently already made up and he is appointing a panel of jurists to put legal flesh on his idea.
If they conclude his Bill of Rights won't work or won't improve on the present situation, will he drop the idea? Regrettably, his opportunistic tactics suggest that he is as addicted to “headline grabbing” as Labour.