I am grateful to Rod Liddle of The Spectator for alerting me to an important lady in the immigration world called lady called Rebecca Chapman.
In the old phrase, Ms Chapman butters her toast on both sides. You see, some of her time she is an Upper Tribunal judge making absurd decisions like allowing two lesbians to remain here because she viewed Albania as Conservative, although homosexuality was decriminalised there 30 years ago.
When not handing out judgements like that, she acts as an ECHR barrister for illegal migrants wanting to stay and it must be a paying game as she’s been doing it for 35 years. In any other walk of life that would be considered a conflict - both legal and financial.
Kelvin MacKenzie hit out at the woke rulings of some of our UK judges
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You can imagine solicitors with an asylum seeker client like the bloke whose son couldn’t stand the chicken nuggets in the Balkans, would be queuing round the block to have Ms Chapman represent them on the basis she knew exactly what the judges would like to hear as she was one herself.
It’s an absolute scandal and the ability to be able to move effortlessly from advocate to judge should, in this area at least, be banned.
Research shows Ms Chapman has yet to boot any asylum seeker out.
Recently she was sitting on the bench when an Iranian came before her. At a lower court he had claimed that he had a number of Facebook friends and that could put him in danger because the Tehran government monitored posts.
The Lower Tribunal thought this was rubbish and ordered him to be kicked out. He appealed and appeared in front of Ms Chapman. Unbelievably she thought the Facebook defence was compelling and ordered the decision to be reversed.
But it was the judgement of the two lesbians which brought Ms Chapman to national prominence. They claimed they would face persecution in Albania due to for their sexual preference. This was an ideal case for the judge as her chambers’ bio says she specialises in cases concerning LGBT+.
Anyway, she sided with the lesbians saying Albania is a ‘’ patriarchal conservative society in which homophobic attitudes still exist, particularly in rural areas.’’ That would probably be true in some areas of rural Britain.
As you know, and as Rod Liddle pointed out, there have been a number of these ludicrous judgments of late. There was the Nigerian woman who failed eight times to secure asylum but was successful on her ninth appeal after joining a terrorist organisation back home despite the judge saying she had so purely to create a claim for asylum. God help me.
Then there was the Pakistani who served 18 months for grooming young girls but was allowed to stay because the man’s family back in Pakistan would ‘’take a dim view ‘’ of his behaviour and make life difficult for him. God help me.
And the convicted Syrian terrorist given leave to remain because the court was told that he had turned his back on terrorising and his house was ‘’ always clean, tidy and homely.’’ God help me.
We can’t carry on like this. Scrapping ECHR should clearly be a priority but since Sir Keir Starmer loves it (the good news it will cost him his job) that seems unlikely.
If Starmer feels he can’t do that he has to water down the law so that judges like Ms Chapman can no longer run roughshod over how most people feel about migrants simply trying it on.
Finally, when Farage comes to power (as he certainly will) he should clear out these judges and scrap a system which only hires from the liberal left.
If Reform feel they have bigger hurdles to climb I trust they will at least stop Ms Chapman buttering her toast on both sides.
