> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://goodoil.news/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # The Great Repeal Britain Needs - URL: https://goodoil.news/the-great-repeal-britain-needs/ - Published: 2026-08-26T02:00:25.000Z - Updated: 2026-08-26T02:00:24.000Z - Description: Thompson is right that Britain’s best reforming moments began with the question ‘What should we remove?’ In an age addicted to adding, the radical act is subtraction. - Author: Reproduced with permission - Tags: UK Politics, World Politics, Law [**Ray Murtha**](https://www.freespeechbacklash.com/article/great-repeal-britain-needs?ref=goodoil.news) *Former ship surveyor resident for almost 30 years in Panama, now retired in Costa Rica. Currently writing a book on Latin America.* Nick Thompson’s essay yesterday, [Reform, Restore, Repeal, Renew](https://www.freespeechbacklash.com/article/reform-restore-repeal-renew?ref=goodoil.news), made a clear and powerful point. Change does not come from piling on more laws. It comes from clearing away the ones that no longer work. He shows how the best reformers, from biblical times to Victorian Britain and Margaret Thatcher, succeeded by cutting back, not by adding. That insight is correct. Britain today needs the same courage. The case stands on simple democratic and practical grounds. Modern government works by accumulation. Every new administration adds statutes, regulations, agencies and international commitments. Almost none remove what went before. The result is a tangled legal system that most people cannot understand and that steadily reduces the power of voters. A law should not survive simply because it is already there. If it fails, it should go. Parliamentary sovereignty is the foundation of British democracy, such as it is. A poor thing in fact, but the people elect a parliament that can make or unmake any law. Anything that puts foreign rules or judges above that parliament is a anti-democratic and should not be accepted. Large parts of our law still carry the imprint of EU membership. Retained EU law and the habits of interpretation that came with it continue to shape decisions long after we left. A proper Great Repeal would wipe the slate clean. Every remaining EU-derived rule should be examined and, unless parliament actively chooses to keep it with the approval of the electorate, repealed. No external system should keep residual power by default. The same principle applies to so-called international law. Treaties and foreign court rulings should not override acts of parliament. Laws and judicial practices that treat international obligations as superior to domestic statute must be repealed. British law is made in Britain. That is the only arrangement consistent with democracy. Tony Blair’s creation of the Supreme Court in 2005 changed the balance of power. It helped judges become more assertive on political questions, especially immigration and ‘rights’. That settlement should be repealed or radically reshaped so that final decisions rest more clearly with elected representatives, again with the approval and consent of the people. A country that cannot control who enters and stays is not fully sovereign. Current immigration laws and the web of appeals and human-rights claims that surround them make enforcement slow and often impossible. These rules should be repealed and replaced with clear, simple primary legislation that prioritises the interests of the existing population and gives officials the power to act without endless legal delay. Hate-crime legislation and the wider equality regime have drifted far from protecting people against violence. They now police speech, opinions and institutional culture. Offence has become a trigger for investigation. Compliance bureaucracies and ‘diversity’ duties push ideological conformity. These laws, and the guidance that expands them, should be repealed. Free speech is the default in a free country. Restrictions belong only where there is real and direct harm. The same clear-out should cover other globalist and ‘woke’ measures: net-zero statutory targets that bind future governments without proper democratic renewal, planning rules that block housing, and layers of regulation whose costs outweigh any proven benefit. If a law no longer serves the public, remove it. Laws that cannot be repealed and politicians who cannot be removed between elections complete the closed system. A serious reform programme needs mechanisms that make failure costly. Abolish fixed-term rules that protect weak governments. Strengthen the power of the House of Commons to bring a government down. Introduce a workable recall system so constituents can remove under-performing MPs. When a government has clearly failed, the path to a fresh election should be short and simple. All of this rests on basic principles: the people are the source of authority; accumulated rules that escape democratic control erode that authority; and a free nation retains the right to scrap what does not work. Thompson is right that Britain’s best reforming moments began with the question ‘What should we remove?’ That question is more urgent now than it has been for decades. A Great Repeal is not vandalism. It is restoration of democratic control, personal liberty and national self-government. In an age addicted to adding, the radical act is subtraction. This article was originally published by the [Free Speech Backlash](https://www.freespeechbacklash.com/article/great-repeal-britain-needs?ref=goodoil.news).