«The police are overreaching in policing thought and opinions»

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After 14 years of Conservative governments in Britain, the economy is in shambles, the state has become bigger, immigration has increased. As a result, the Tories were crushed in the last election. What did you do wrong?

We did a lot of things wrong. We failed in government on key priorities and broke promises. We promised that we would lower immigration, yet we oversaw an unprecedented number of immigrants coming into the country. We also failed to control illegal migration. 100 000 people have come into the UK illegally over recent years crossing the Channel in small boats. Furthermore, we failed to cut taxes. In fact, the tax burden reached a 70-year high under the Conservative administration.

How would you solve the migration problem?

This is a global migration crisis. When I was Home Secretary, I met with many European counterparts. They were all grappling with the same issue. One of the reasons we have failed to control illegal migration is because of our human rights laws, namely the Human Rights Act – which is a domestic piece of legislation that applies the European Convention on Human Rights – combined with other international law. We often can’t deport illegal migrants because they claim human rights. The human rights legislation has been distorted and inflated.

«We often can’t deport illegal migrants because they claim human rights. The human rights legislation has been distorted and inflated.»

So what’s the solution?

We have to pull out of the European Convention on Human Rights and get out of the jurisdiction of the European Court of Human Rights. We also need to scrap the Human Rights Act and amend our laws so that, if you arrive in the UK illegally, you can be detained and removed quickly. We have to do that in conjunction with our Rwanda partnership. This solution provides a deterrent so that people don’t come to the country in the first place.

Could Australia be a good example?

Australia is one example of a country that has achieved some success when it comes to illegal migration. The Australian government implemented a scheme of removing illegal migrants from Australia to other territories like Papua New Guinea. As a result, the people coming on the boats, who were mainly coming from Sri Lanka across the ocean, were deterred from making the journey in the first place.

In Britain, people like journalist Alison Pearson get visited by police after posting some slurs online. Is freedom of speech dead in the UK?

I don’t think it’s dead, but there’s definitely a crisis. Alison Pearson is a friend of mine. It’s absolutely outrageous that she was visited by the police and threatened with a “non-crime hate incident” for expressing perfectly legitimate and lawful views. Because of the public outcry, the police backed off and no further action was taken. But how many people are in the privileged position of a well-known, successful journalist? Not many. Thousands of people are being persecuted through this overzealous approach to policing which I would call “woke policing”. It’s a double standard: The police are overreaching in policing thought and opinions. That is territory which the police shouldn’t intrude upon. They should focus on burglars, drug dealers and violent crime, not worry about what someone posts on social media.

But why did this even happen in Great Britain? It sounds like George Orwell’s “1984”.

It is indeed Orwellian. The reason it’s happened is the same reason that we can’t control illegal migration: a combination of state expansionism, woke ideology, captured institutions and a lack of challenge within those institutions. What started off as something with good intentions back in the early 2000s has transformed into something very harmful. A “non-crime hate incident” is something that is not a crime. But the police still consider it to be a problem and will record your data. The concept has its genesis after a tragic, racially motivated murder. There was a report which said that we need to track racial hatred in the UK. That’s a good thing. Then it expanded into all protected characteristics, not just race, but also religion, sex, gender identity, age and disability. Then it turned into subjective assessment of taking offense. So something which started off as very sensible has been distorted, expanded and hijacked over the years to become something very dangerous to freedom of speech. It’s a very good example of how we always need to be very vigilant about state and police overreach.

Talking about state and police, there’s one CCTV camera for every 11 people in Britain. It’s one of the most monitored nations in the world. Doesn’t the prospect of this 1984 dystopia bother you?

There is a need to make sure that we are free from state interference and arbitrary state intrusion, but also for law enforcement and public safety. As Home Secretary, I actually was very interested in the use of CCTV. The technology has advanced a lot. It is so accurate that it can identify if there is a suspect in the crowd. It might gather other data of other innocent people, but it won’t retain that data. There is a very strong value to help law enforcement identify suspects like terrorists. We’ve had some success by judiciously and very carefully using CCTV in that way.

But do you really want to put this kind of weapon in the hands of a “woke” police force that may at some point detect the faces of people guilty of “non-crime hate incidents”?

That is a fair question. On the one hand, I criticize the police for being woke and overzealous. On the other hand, I’ve also supported the use of CCTV. But two wrongs don’t make a right. What we need is to fix the police. We need to have a police force that is much more focused on tackling crime and the priorities of the British people like violent crime, drug dealing, sexual offenses or terrorism ­­­­­­­– not what people post on social media. If they are targeting their resources at those things, then we should give them every tool to do that most effectively.

Switzerland and the UK are currently negotiating a modernization of their bilateral trade agreement. Your party colleague Daniel Hannan wrote in our magazine last year: «The potential benefits of an enhanced trade deal between the UK and Switzerland are enormous, not just for the two nations, but for global free trade.» Do you agree?

Of course. Lord Hannan is a great advocate for Switzerland in the UK. Actually, he leads the UK MPs Swiss ski trip every year. There’s huge commonality between Switzerland and the United Kingdom – we have a lot of sectors which have shared goals, financial services being one example. Politically, Switzerland has a healthy level of scepticism towards supranational bodies. That is a culture that we share in Britain.

«Switzerland has a healthy level of scepticism towards supranational

bodies. That is a culture that we share in Britain.»

Do we have to team up as freedom-loving countries like the UK, the US, Switzerland, maybe also Israel, against the EU bureaucracy and against the authoritarian regimes of the East?

What we’re involved in at the moment is a battle between democracy and autocracy. The world is dividing into a schism: There is Western civilization, the rule of law, protection and respect for minority rights, democratic values and equality for women on the one hand, and totalitarianism, tyranny, brutality, human rights violations and extremism on the other. I am not sure which side is going to win, because there are precious few democracies left in the world. The autocratic, hostile states are arming themselves and are aligned with each other. They are causing a huge amount of destabilization to democracies around the world through the use of traditional military warfare, but also cyberattacks, espionage and other forms of subversion. That’s why democratic states need to ally with each other to fight back.

What’s your view in general of Switzerland?

I love Switzerland! I’ve had many nice holidays here. The big feature about Switzerland is your vibrant democratic culture and the fact that you have really devolved democracy in such an effective way. The use of referenda in a regular, normalized way has engaged a very high level of citizenship participation. That’s a very healthy model. It’s something from which we could learn in the United Kingdom.