In praise of Sir Christopher Chope

Sir Christopher Chope MP has provoked outrage in England by crying out 'Object' and thus sabotaging a private member's bill criminalising taking 'upskirt' photographs of women. 

Such pictures are yucky and reprehensible, but does this mean it is useful to make them illegal and with a penalty of up to two years' imprisonment? Whatever your view, one has to admire a conservative who wants to limit the power of the state and insist on Parliamentary scrutiny of legislation.

He uses his right to shout 'Object' and thus kill most 'ten-minute' Private Members' Bills, as he thinks they do not receive proper scrutiny. There was an MP in the 1980s who did the same, but I can no longer remember who.

Sir Christopher is now in his early 70s. I remember Lady Chope when she was a pretty young girl. Eheu fugaces labuntur anni. 

I probably made a mistake in not liking Mrs Thatcher. My reasons for not doing so was because I thought she was uncaring about the poor and I could not see that she was really a conservative rather than an economic liberal. But she and the Thatcherites like Sir Christopher were true conservatives. I see this now.

I suddenly see this because I look up Sir Christopher, who was an arch-Thatcherite and not unfriendly to white-ruled South Africa, and read that he has consistently voted against legislation for 'equal pay', whatever that means, same-sex marriage, the hunting and smoking bans and voted to abolish the national minimum wage in 2009. 

I ardently agree with him on all of these. Like me he believes in freedom and tradition.

I agree with him on most stances  except his wanting to bring back hanging and ban burqas (here he does not believe in freedom). I disagree with him on these two issues, but I see good arguments for and against.

Sajid Javid, the new Home Secretary, has promised to give the bill Government time, which means it will pass. He earns many plaudits for this, as for other things he proposes. He is the perfect example of a populist, but no-one calls him this.

Poor old Sir Christopher has explained that he supports the bill but thought it should not become law without the scrutiny of the House of Commons.

Personally I don't have a very thought-out opinion on whether these photographs should be crimes or not, but I do think far too many things are illegal in England and lots of things that are illegal now should be legalised. 

Instead the motto in England seems to be Mussolini's dictum:

"Everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state".

I also wonder why the government worries about this and not about female genital mutilation. 

Or the epidemic of young girls being 'groomed' and raped by (Muslim) gangs. Laura Perrins put it pithily, in an article in Conservative Woman, 

"You know it’s funny, Theresa May and the rest of them are falling over themselves to criminalise the wrong that is ‘upskirting’ yet the CPS don’t seem able to get a handle on the child rape cases. Do we really need more minor sexual offences when the police and CPS cannot prosecute the most serious of all – gang rape of kids?"