Cats, convicts and clerics : how the media and politicians have framed the Human Rights Act

Abstract

The chapter deals with a number of related episodes in which the media - tabloid and broadsheet newspapers - colluded with ministers to 'demonise' the Human Rights Act as part of a longer-term objective of de-legitimizing the UK's membership of the European Union. It takes a number of case studies to argue that a deliberate conflation of the HRA and European Court of Human Rights with the policies of the European Union helped breed support for an anti-EU agenda in UK public policy.