What is 'Safe'?

Speech given to the Margaret Thatcher Centre: Broughton Hall, Skipton

I stand before you not as a prophet of doom, but as a slightly disjointed observer. My subject is “What is ‘safe?’.

’Safe’, it’s such a slippery, seductive word that now permeates every corner of British public and political life like a Dales fog. It’s a concept that has ballooned from a sensible precaution into a tyrannical idol, worshipped at the expense of common sense, liberty, and progress. And nowhere is its absurdity more evident than in our bungled attempts to control borders and asylum, where “safety” becomes a weapon wielded not by ministers, but by an unelected cadre of lawyers and judges.

Let us begin with the everyday absurdities that set the stage. Picture this: you’re on a train, and the announcement blares, “Safety is our top priority.” Or at a construction site: “Our first duty is to ensure everyone’s safety.” Every company, from airlines to bakeries, parrots this mantra. But is it? No, the airline’s job is to fly planes; the baker’s to bake bread. Safety is essential, yes, but elevating it above the core mission reeks of bureaucratic overreach.

This cult of safety has risen inexorably alongside the bloated state, the proliferation of lanyards dangling from corporate necks like talismans or morality nooses, - I mean look at us here, at the Margaret Thatcher Centre all proudly wearing our own blue ropes - and the insidious creep of human resources culture. HR departments, those modern inquisitors, enforce “safe spaces” where dissent is heresy, and risk assessments stifle innovation and free speech goes to die. It’s a world where playgrounds are padded to absurdity, and employees are trained not in skills, but in avoiding offence. This isn’t safeguarding; it’s societal strangulation, a slow garrote on the British spirit.

At the heart of this malaise lies the precautionary principle, a doctrine that demands we prove something is absolutely safe before proceeding, inverting the burden of proof from harm to harmlessness. Its origins trace back to the environmental movements of the 1970s in Germany and Sweden, where “Vorsorge” or foresight planning sought to prevent ecological disasters. It gained global traction at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, enshrined as Principle 15: “Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures.” Noble in theory, but in practice, a recipe for stagnation.

Enter the European Union, which elevated this principle to holy writ. The 1992 Maastricht Treaty embedded it in environmental policy, later codified in Article 191 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU). The EU made precaution the core of its regulatory regime, applying it to everything from chemicals to GMOs, demanding proof of safety before market entry. This wasn’t mere caution; it was a philosophical shift toward risk aversion, propagated through directives that stifled enterprise and favoured bureaucracy over boldness.

Brexit was meant to free us from this straitjacket, but through legislative osmosis, the precautionary principle has seeped into UK law. The European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 retained swathes of EU regulations, embedding precaution in our environmental and health frameworks. Our courts, taking their cue from EU precedents, have made it doctrinal. In cases like the 2015 WWF challenge to neonicotinoid pesticides or the 2021 ClientEarth air quality rulings, judges have invoked precaution to override government decisions, demanding absolute safety proofs. This isn’t justice; it’s judicial activism, where unelected robes trump elected representatives.

Now, let us pivot to the realm where this obsession with safety reveals its most farcical contradictions: immigration and asylum policy. Just days ago, Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood, announced sweeping reforms. Asylum seekers from countries deemed “safe” will be deported, their status temporary, subject to review if their homeland stabilises. It’s a bold pitch, echoing Denmark’s model, aimed at curbing the “out of control” system. But who decides what constitutes “safe”?

Not the government, oh no. In Great Britain today, we suffer not under the rule of law, the liberating, equalising force of common law, but under the rule of lawyers, and human rights lawyers at that. Armed with the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and our own Human Rights Act 1998 (HRA), they wield “safety” like a cudgel.

Precedents from Strasbourg and Westminster courts have embedded these instruments so deeply that common sense is exiled from the public sphere. Enter the Tweedledum and Tweedledee of this farce: Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Attorney General Lord Hermer. Starmer, a human rights barrister par excellence, has long prioritised international law over national sovereignty. Hermer, his echo, warns against any “pick and mix” with the ECHR, insisting it trumps domestic needs.

Recall the Conservatives’ Rwanda plan, that white elephant of immigration policy, costing millions yet deporting none. It was kyboshed by the Supreme Court in November 2023, which deemed Rwanda unsafe due to risks of refoulement, sending refugees back to peril, and inadequate asylum processes. The judges, channelling precautionary zeal, demanded ironclad proofs of safety, overriding parliamentary intent. If Rwanda, stable, growing, praised by the UN for refugee handling, wasn’t safe, what is?

Safety, it turns out, is in the eye of the beholder. Let me paint a hypothetical that’s not so far-fetched. Imagine I, Gawain Towler, and imagine me being a man of Jewish heritage, had broken the law in Estonia. The authorities there seek to deport me back to the UK so heinous was my transgression.

Could I not argue, with a straight face, that Britain is unsafe for me? Consider the evidence: the massive hate marches in London since October 2023, where chants of “From the river to the sea” echo genocidal intent, and anti-Semitic placards go unchallenged. The treatment of Maccabi Tel Aviv fans in Birmingham, with UK police advising Jews to avoid certain areas due protests. Planned ‘Jew hunts’. Then the horrors at Manchester’s Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation synagogue in October 2025, with a terrorist attack claiming two lives, stoking fears in a community already reeling from a 465% surge in university anti-Semitism, murderous NHS doctors and record hate crimes. If these don’t render the UK “unsafe” under ECHR’s expansive lens, protecting against persecution, ill-treatment, or refoulement, then, one has to ask, what does?

A Jewish criminal could fairly claim Britain unsafe, citing these bubbling hatreds untempered by authorities. And if the UK, cradle of Magna Carta, beacon of tolerance, isn’t safe under ECHR rules, where is? France, with its synagogue arsons? Germany, haunted by its past amid rising neo-Nazism?

Safety becomes like Tantalus’s water in Hades: eternally tempting, cooling our parched throats with promise, yet receding just as we stoop to drink. It’s a mirage, forever out of reach, manipulated by lawyers to thwart policy.

So, what country could this government deem safe? Mahmood’s speech, for all its bravado, is mere rhetoric, “Mahmood music,” as I’ve called it elsewhere. Lists of safe countries will be challenged in court, parsed by Hermer’s ilk, and struck down under precautionary human rights logic. Without primary legislation overriding ECHR primacy, unlikely under Starmer’s fanaticism for international law, the cycle repeats. Safety, that elusive idol, ensures nothing changes.

Ladies and Gentlemen, it’s time to reclaim safety from its tyrants. Strip away the precautionary shackles, restore common law’s balance of risks and rewards. Let governments govern, let calculated risk reign, let not lawyers litigate. For if safety is everything, then liberty is nothing, and Britain risks becoming a nation afraid of its own shadow.

Thank you.