YPR First Edition

YORK POLITICS
REIVEW
ISSUE NO. 1YORKPOLSOC.COM
A dying sentiment?
Free at the point of use:
By Russ Gardiner
seriously enough?
Do we take politics
By Henry Honeywood

The first edition of York Politics Review is here. This
started out as my idea for a blog for the Politics
Society that would allow students to write less
formal political articles that could encourage
debate and interaction with the department and
academics. However, we then pursued that idea
and came up with this format. A magazine style
publication with articles written by students and
academics freely available to everyone.
As the first edition there is not a great amount of
work, however we hope over time this can grow to
become a bi-termly publication that attracts high
quality articles from students and academics.
We have tried to increase the presence and
activity of the York Politics Society; we have
created numerous new events and socials, and
gained a good relationship with the department
and are continuing to make the society grow. This
publication is another step in doing just that, and
we hope over time this can really develop and
become a well-established product.
Henry Honeywood
POLITICS REVIEWPAGE 2
CONTENTS
Editors Word
Page 3 - Free at the point of use: A dying
sentiment - Russ Gardiner
Page 6 - Do we take politics seriously enough -
Henry Honeywood
Page 8 - Rousseau - A discourse on social
media - Robert Gordon
Page 11 - Brave New World? Assessing the
Impact of Technology in the 21st Century -
Geoff Glover
Page 15 - Disabling the Disabled - Robert
Gordon
Page 17 - Alienable human rights and national
sovereignty: the European migrant-crisis

FREE AT THE POINT OF
USE: A DYING SENTIMENT?
AN ARTICLE BY RUSS GARDINER
Back in 2015, for example, the only private
company operating an NHS hospital pulled out.
If nothing else, it shows that British healthcare
is fundamentally difficult to make a profit out
of.
The British healthcare system in its current
form is not necessarily conducive to private
operation. This is in many ways best
exemplified through the ongoing junior doctor
strikes. As a public run organisation, workers
can strike much easier than is possible or
conducive in the private sector. NHS policy
from this government is far more liberal than its
policies towards industry, commerce or the
economic sphere more generally. While TATA’s
failed venture into the UK stock market gets
little in terms of government economic
sympathy, the NHS is seeing hordes of public
money ploughed in, albeit not enough if you
listen to our learned friends at the British
Medical Association.
“If you can have full employment by
killing Germans, why can’t we have
full employment by building
hospitals, building schools?” Tony
Benn on the founding of the NHS,
2007.
Since the formation of Foundation Hospitals
and Primary Care Trusts through the early
2000s, there have been murmurs that the NHS
is going to become like the American
insurance based healthcare system. I feel that
this is scaremongering, at times deliberate
scaremongering to try and divert the political
debate from more pressing issues. While the
NHS is indeed seeing some levels of increased
competition and private intervention, there are
notable cases to show that this is not quite as
black and white as it seems.
The NHS remains something of a buzz phrase
in the United Kingdom, mostly because of the
sentiment specified in the title of this article:
that it remains an arbiter for free healthcare.
The most recent administrations have made
the most diverse and extensive array of
changes to the NHS since its inception in 1948.
It is the worry of many in the political
academia and in the public that it is going to
see this aspect of ‘free at the point use’
diminished and eventually destroyed. It is not
the point of this piece to try and critique or
support the government, rather, to try and
dispel some myths that the newspapers would
have us believe, and provide a prediction for
the future.
PAGE 3 ARTICLEPOLITICS REVIEW

ARTICLEPOLITICS REVIEW
In many ways the National Health Service is far
more financially insolvent than British steel,
however, it will continue to get exponential
levels of economic injection in the years to
come.
It remains a red-line for a government to be
elected. Supporting the NHS is still a vastly
important area of public opinion that any party
contesting at a general election needs to have a
plan for. Instead, much of Conservative policy in
terms of healthcare and education has been
within the remit of devolving. There has been
more devolution of power to local people in
many important sectors where privatisation is
not an immediate possibility. It retains the ideals
of making sure that hard-working British
families get control, whilst making sure that the
NHS isn’t divided up and fragmented by the kind
of individuals that Mossack Fonseca were
perhaps too tolerant of.
But let’s move on from the obvious notion that
I’m starting to sound like an Ian Hislop wannabe
and return to the issue of pertinence. The free at
the point of use aspect of the NHS in terms of
emergency care and treatment should not be
going anywhere if the party suggesting it wants
to continue being elected to parliament. Too
often, it is my belief, that the public assume
party leaders put forward legislation because of
some emotion-backed ideology. The
Conservatives, to take an example “put forward
nasty legislation simply to economically
appropriate the poorest in society”.
In reality, they’ve politically calculated that it is
the best course of action to keep their core
electoral support base on side. Politicians are far
more human than people give them credit for.
The British public will tolerate the privatisation
of industry and the cutting of welfare payments,
most of them wouldn’t sway their voting
opinion upon one of these areas.
The NHS is different, if any of the major political
parties were to advocate a private based system
of healthcare for Britain, they’d get very short
shrift from the electorate, coming back to Tony
Benn’s musings on post-war Britain. To
exemplify this point further let’s take UKIP. A
party who changed their policy on the NHS
overnight after realising that voters didn’t take
too kindly to their original platform of moving
towards an insurance based system.
The NHS is different, if any of the major political
parties were to advocate a private based system
of healthcare for Britain, they’d get very short
shrift from the electorate, coming back to Tony
Benn’s musings on post-war Britain. To
exemplify this point further let’s take UKIP. A
party who changed their policy on the NHS
overnight after realising that voters didn’t take
too kindly to their original platform of moving
towards an insurance based system.
This can be directly synthesised with the 2015
election, in every interview on television, the
amounts that Miliband, Cameron, Bennett,
Clegg etc. were promising for the NHS in terms
of extra investment seemed to grow

exponentially (Farage was a bit busy blaming
immigrants with HIV for NHS overspending).
Of course the most important caveat to keep in
mind with this is the fact much of the NHS in its
current guise is not arbitrarily free at the point of
use. NHS England charge for prescriptions, dental
appointments, and don’t even mention hospital
car parking charges, Heathrow Airport Terminal 5
is actually cheaper on average per hour. But in
terms of A&E, non-emergency treatment and
advice, the NHS remains a powerful, solid and
remarkable organisation which still undoubtedly
sets an example to the rest of the world, in the
way we approach healthcare for the masses.
There have been countless polls to prove this fact
and even more in way of statistics. In terms of
achievements, the NHS has cut diabetes by 66%,
with similar figures for heart attacks and obesity
related illnesses. In terms of polling, the NHS
scores first in terms of state healthcare provision
the world over. “The United Kingdom ranks first
overall, scoring highest on quality and efficiency”.
It remains one of the reasons that immigrants
from all walks of life see Britain as a positive place
to build a new life. Similarly, expatriates often tell
me how much they lament not having the NHS
when living abroad.
POLITICS REVIEW ARTICLEPAGE 5

do. It is because of politics we have the vital
things we need to work and live in modern
society. These things are not a given in society,
they are organized and created through the
vocation of politics
What is becoming ever more apparent to me,
with the primaries in America and the
increasingly trivialized elections in Britain, is
that citizens are not taking politics seriously
enough. Whilst I could list endless gaffes and
outrageous things Trump has said and done,
that would only serve to trivialize my argument
and therefore I will stick to things that are
actually important and dangerous that he has
said and done. The fact that Donald Trump has
openly and vehemently called for a ‘total and
complete shutdown of Muslims entering the
United States’, yet he still attracts such high
support in American is staggering in the 21st
century.
It doesn’t get any better when we look at Britain
either, elections here are often characterised by
I neither have qualification to be preachy, nor
do I ever want to be, and I realize that I am now
going to make that infamous ‘I’m not but’
saying, but politics is important, so please can
we take it more seriously. I am forever being
asked by friends and family why I chose
politics, they often say isn’t that really boring?
Or just sigh when I tell them the degree and
move on to something else, and whilst I totally
understand and was once very ignorant of
politics before starting to study it, I now
understand its importance. Whilst media focus
is most of the time on something as trivial as
the appearance of our political leaders, for
example whether they look good eating a
bacon sandwich or riding a bike through
crowded central London, politics is actually
about much more important issues. As Harold
Lasswell immortalized so clearly, politics is
about who gets what, when, and how. The
implications of this ranges from whether your
local shop is open beyond 6 on a Sunday, to
whether or not vital medical services are free
upon the point of need.
It is therefore vital that we take it seriously.
Politics is a civic duty, I believe this because
without politics, life would not be something
that we could live as happily and easily as we
DO WE TAKE POLITICS SERIOUSLY
ENOUGH?
H e n r y H o n e y w o o d
We owe a duty to society itself
to get involved with politics
and be active citizens to
ensure the maintenance of
these vital things.

I am therefore pleading for everyone just to
take politics a bit more seriously. I really don’t
want to see anymore dangerous false narratives
gain more support, and Trump’s rise is
something no one should be subjected to.
Don’t let the extreme take over politics through
the use of easily relatable images that hide
their true xenophobic views and policies that
would be detrimental to any country. This is
especially relevant now with the upcoming EU
referendum; please vote and when doing so,
don’t rely on the false narratives about
migration to inform your vote.
negative bashing of candidates, for example
the vilification of Ed Miliband about looking
‘weird’ and ‘non-prime ministerial’. Also some
of the rhetoric and manipulation of facts and
narratives by UKIP and other parties is deeply
concerning especially considering UKIP’s
continued growth, especially amongst the
previous left wing in Britain. This, in my
opinion, is in part due to Farage’s image of
being a ‘normal’ bloke who likes a drink, a
basis on which we should not be electing the
future prime minister on. In politics it is so
often all about narrative because we don't go
and look into things because, quite frankly, it's
often very boring. It is how politicians present
things that influences and defines debates
never mind whether it's true or not. This is all
because we don't take politics seriously
enough and just look at the superficial things,
that are easy to understand and catch our eyes
in the media, to make our decisions.
It may seem like voting is too complicated and
boring, buts it's precisely this thinking and
attitude that makes it all the more easy for
narratives politicians make up, to persuade
voters at the ballot box. This allows deceptive
narratives that are appealing sway people’s
votes. The negative connotations that
surround politics is also worrying. I believe a
vast amount of this is the fault of the new
wave of professional politicians. Whilst it used
to be that you and your local milkman got
involved with politics, now it is left to the new
class of professional politicians who end up in
scandals that taint the profession.

insightful account of inequity in society and the
vain superficiality of modern man. This post will
explore the applicability of his critique with a
modern commentary on social media. Online
platforms are far from perfect and had Rousseau
been alive today, his critique would have
undoubtedly extended to explore the evils of
social media. Common modern criticisms
condemn social networks for enhancing feelings
of loneliness and isolation3, or for facilitating
cyber-bully (think Yik Yak during the YUSU
Elections this year). I suggest, however, that
Rousseau’s critique is perhaps more applicable
to the seemingly harmless, daily functioning of
social media: from writing status updates and
uploading photos, to browsing our news feeds
and following our friends. I will highlight three
areas in which Rousseau’s critique may be
applied to social media.
Socialmediaiscontributingtoourmisery:
Rousseau contended that man is society is
regrettably psychologically dependent upon his
peers as a result of an inflamed amour propre
(self-love, or vanity). Aware of our own strengths
*Disclaimer* I am not the real Jean-Jacques
Rousseau.
Before I’m derided as a massive hypocrite, I am
not trying to exhaustively expound the vices and
virtues of social media.The purpose of this piece
was merely to apply Rousseau’s moral-political
theory to a critique of social media for the sake of
satire and making my revision process slightly less
detestable.
Who the f*ck is he then? Jean-Jacques
Rousseau was an 18th Century Philosopher who
famously wrote ‘On the Social Contract, or
Principles of Political Right’. His legacy inspired
philosophers such as Immanuel Kant, and he is
often associated with the French Revolution. He
was also a music critic and composer.
“Why do we care about what this dead white
dude has to say?” I hear you ask.
Well, not all of us do. Unfortunately, he’s on the
curriculum and I’ll likely be answering an exam
question on him in May. For those of you in a
similar predicament, I hope this short piece
contributes somewhat to your revision process, or
at least makes you feel a little less bad about
procrastinating. (Note: Reading this is probably
not a substitute for revision)
So what does he have to say about social media?
Well, nothing directly. In his Discourse on
Inequality2, however, Rousseau propounded an
Rousseau - A Discourse on Social Media
R o b e r t G o r d o n
PAGE 8

natural virtue. Drawing upon the example of
the development of thought in modern society,
he astutely commented “the question is no
longer whether a man is honest, but whether
he is clever”5. Rather than encouraging virtue,
we are instead more concerned with how we
are perceived. When applied to social media, it
becomes easy to see how our online image
may be a falsely constructed facade. We
perhaps care more about appearing
knowledgeable, cultured,
fun-loving or morally ‘good’ through our posts
than we actually care about attending to
virtuous actions.
Rousseau also suggested that people could
deceive themselves of their own moral
qualities, convincing themselves of their
goodness, for example, by evoking their
natural compassion (pitié) by watching
tragedies in the theatre. A parallel can perhaps
be drawn to politically motivated posts on
social media which satisfy our sense of
compassion but nonetheless seemingly
contribute nothing of worth to the world.
and shortcomings, we compare ourselves with
others. A sense of self-importance coupled
with an inflamed amour propre necessitates
that others recognise our own self-perceived
excellence. The resultant competition for
esteem between equally self-regarding
individuals leaves each and every one of us
unavoidably unhappy and unfulfilled.
Competition has numerous outlets from
artwork to dances, and social media now
provides a modern twist on this enduring tale.
The result is nonetheless the same; social
media is contributing to our misery. We are
increasingly deriving our sense of self from the
opinions of others, seeking validation through
the commodity of Facebook likes, and
constantly striving exact praise and admiration
from our peers through our posts. Similarly,
regarding the success or happiness of others
online may have a detrimental impact upon
self-esteem; devaluing our sense of self-worth.
Socialmediaisdegradingourmorals:
In Rousseau’s First Discourse5, he sought to
argue that advancements in the arts and
sciences correlates with a deterioration of our

Outbursts of online emotion subsequent to the
Paris or Brussels terrorist attacks, and perpetual
hollow appeals to the salvation of refugees may
be examples of this, as satisfying and simple
alternatives to physical activism.
Social media is weakening our natural
constitutions:
There is one more possible critique that may be
derived from Rousseau’s political writings and
applied non-exclusively against social media.
Rousseau provides an interesting account of
natural man, the so-called ‘noble savage’, as
inherently strong and robust creatures capable
of fending for themselves in the wild. In society,
however, man’s “effeminate lifestyle completes
the enervation of both his strength and his
courage”2. He uses examples of overeating,
staying up too late, and idleness to
demonstrate how modern ills are of our own
making as we constantly contribute to our own
demise. Excessive use of social media similarly
*depicts this woeful tale as we become less
active, physically weaker, and stay up later on
our electronic devices.

Technology and human societies have shared a
close relationship throughout history. It can be
reasonably argued that social progress and
technological advancement are mutually
reinforcing phenomena. The most obvious
example of this progression is undoubtedly the
Industrial Revolution. The 18th and 19th
centuries saw the most unprecedented
advances prior to the present day. New
handlooms overhauled the textiles industry by
streamlining the production process,
displacing a large number of weavers. The
displaced then revolted in protest of their
unemployment, smashing the handlooms, and
gaining the name “Luddites”; those who resist
technological progress. However, the result of
this overhaul of the production process was the
creation of greater wealth for everyone and a
general increase in the standard of living.
However, this is not an examination into the
nature of social advancement. Rather, the
question is: what cost are we as a society
willing to pay for it? In this article, I’m aiming to
provide an overview of the current state of
emergent technologies, focusing on
automation and Artificial Intelligence (AI), and
then move on to possible policy prescriptions
that we will have to consider in the future as a
response.
Brave New World? Assessing the Impact of
Technology in the 21st Century
Geoff Glover
We’re seeing in the 21st Century a similar case
to what occurred 200 years ago. However, this
time around the pace of change is arguably
unprecedented. Rapid advances in areas such
as IT, robotics, and AI are giving us cheaper
goods and services. However, they are also
highlighting the new challenges that society
will have to face sooner rather than later. An
Oxford study conducted in 2013 found that
45% of jobs in the United States are vulnerable
to computerisation and automation within the
next 20 years. Jobs such as trucking, an
industry that employs some 800,000 people in
the US, are already seriously under threat due
to the continued improvement of self-driving
vehicles. It would not take a huge leap of faith
to imagine the industry not existing in the
same form in a few years’ time. This is merely
one case study of automation. Robots will in all
likelihood continue to threaten and eventually
replace most forms of manual labour, both
routine and non-routine. Darrel West, in a
paper published by Brookings, argues that as
technology continues to advance and improve,
other industries that employ more cognitive
skills are under threat as well, such as
management and administration. This is in
large part because of the subject matter
discussed below: artificial intelligence.

AI is one field that merits close attention. In
March 2016, Google’s AlphaGo, an AI which
employs a class of machine learning known as
“deep learning”, beat Lee Sedol, the world
champion of Go, an ancient Chinese board
game that is known for its complexity, 4-1 in
one of the greatest upsets of recent memory.
Many believed that an AI that could beat a
professional at Go was 10 or more years away.
The complexity of Go is legendary, with
estimates of the number of possible games
being 10360, with the number of atoms in the
observable universe being estimated at around
1080. Previous victories of computers over
humans --Gasparov vs Deep Blue in 1997
springs to mind-- pale in comparison. When I
talk about deep learning, it should be noted
that this means that the machine in question is
able to make a judgement intuitively. In the
case of Go, this meant “sensing” what the right
move was, a decision derived through
experience. Deep Blue used raw computational
power to calculate the best possible chess
move because the number of possible moves,
ergo the best move, is small enough to
calculate. With Go however, this approach is
impractical due to the sheer volume of possible
combinations. Rather, AlphaGo was “taught”
the rules, and then proceeded to play millions
of games against itself to determine the best
move in any given scenario. Being a computer,
this was easy: it’s hardly any surprise that Sedol
was beaten when the factors involved are
considered. Small wonder that experts
including Stephen Hawking and Bill Gates have
warned of an existential threat to humanity
from AI.
Scott Sansens argues in the Boston Globe that
AlphaGo is a clear indication that advances in
technology are now arriving at an exponential
rate, meaning that certain technologies will be
arriving in months and years rather than
decades. The worry is that advances will
continue to come rapidly, outpacing the labour
market before it can create enough new jobs to
alleviate unemployment. As mentioned,
previous industries such as administration --
jobs that have come to be called “routine
cognitive” occupations -- were thought to be
safe havens from automation. AlphaGo’s
success is building on previous challenges to
that assumption with a credible example of a
machine being able to “learn” how to execute
certain complex tasks, given the proper data. In
summary, robots can operate without
interruption, don’t get sick or distracted, and
cost a fraction of human labour, making them
far more cost-effective and attractive to
industries. This raises one very pertinent
question: how do we provide social benefits
without tying them to employment?
For the sake of brevity, I will focus on one policy
prescription that has been advocated for in
economic thought for decades. As many will
have guessed, I’m, rather predictably, talking
about a Universal Basic Income (also known as
unconditional basic income and UBI).
But where does this leave
people?

For those seeking a more detailed examination
of other strategies, I encourage you to read the
Brookings article linked below. To clarify, I am
not trying to predict the future. The very nature
of this subject means that predictions of the
effects of this “second machine age”, so dubbed
by two MIT academics, can’t be made with any
certainty. As a result, a number of resulting
scenarios can be argued for aggressively. With
that in mind, let’s proceed with UBI. In essence,
UBI is an income that comes directly from the
government to individuals that isn’t tied to any
other factor, for example income or taxes. I
want to draw attention to the subject because,
broadly speaking, it’s an approach that can
appeal to a number of different people. It’s easy
to see why anyone on the left would be in
favour. A permanent financial safety net
screams socialism. However, the idea in its
many forms has been promoted by both
libertarian Friedrich Hayek, and neo-liberal
godfather, Milton Friedman. In fact, UBI would
be a way of limiting the welfare state and
cutting costs significantly. A system of
guaranteed income would do away with the
byzantine bureaucracy that surrounds the
administration of benefits (factors considered
including income, family, education etc.) and
would wrap them up into a neat and tidy
bundle. Current welfare programs in the US
generally demand that the recipient meet a
number of conditions to receive welfare
payments, a clear contradiction with libertarian
values of freedom from coercion, particularly
from the state. In the British case, the
government has compartmentalised each
benefit (unemployment, housing, disability),
creating a large, unwieldy, and costly
bureaucracy. UBI would be a good system to do
away with these issues. Furthermore, the
administration of a basic income would, in
theory, provide an opportunity for people to
work for pleasure rather than to survive, leaving
time to pursue creative or entrepreneurial
pursuits.
Experiments have been conducted on the
subject in the past. Fear surrounds the notion
with the general line being that it would make
people lazy and not work. One notable study by
Evelyn Forget to come out of the Canadian
example, “MinCome” (Minimum Income) shows
that fears are unfounded. The experiment was
conducted in the 1970’s in a town called
“Dauphin”, near Winnipeg. Forget documents a
general increase in the health of the population
and a longer stay in education. What the data
didn’t show was that adult work hours went
down. One exception to this was with women
who had just given birth. To summarise, a
healthier population, a better educated
workforce, and women who wanted to give
more time to raising their new born children. It’s
no wonder that endorsements for a system of
UBI come from economists all the time, most
recently from Professor Christopher Pissarides,
Nobel prize winning economist and Regius
Professor at the LSE during the World Economic
Forum in January 2016. An open letter to the
American government, signed by over 1000
economists from 125 American universities
echoes these sentiments. With other

experiments being conducted in Finland,
Canada, and Spain, is the time for a new
strategy right?
In conclusion, technology and automation will
continue to affect our daily lives and progress
shows no sign of slowing. In this essay, I’ve
posed this question: what price are we willing
to pay for said progress? The question is
weighted depending on what view one takes
on the nature of technological progress. One
factor is undeniable however: machines are
replacing humans in the workforce. Granted,
the rate which this is taking place and the
depth of true automation is in question.
Furthermore, as with all other economic
upheavals (see globalisation), there are winners
and losers. My question is: are we willing to
leave the losers behind for the sake of material
progress? I would contend that no one reading
this would take pleasure in seeing someone
starve because their skills have become
obsolete. The case for Universal Basic Income
outlined above shouldn’t be applied only to
technological displacement however. The
current economic climate has shown that a
number of full time jobs are not paying enough
for workers to be able to live, regardless of
technology. I would contend that a basic
income would go a long way towards
alleviating the current pressures on the labour
market and would pre-empt a possible scenario
where hundreds and thousands are made
redundant. However, more research on the
subject matter is certainly in order. In any case, I,
as a self-described techno-optimist, am
of the opinion that work should be for
machines, and humans will benefit because of
it.

Over the Christmas break I wrote an essay
questioning the extent to which the rights of
people with disabilities are protected in the
United Kingdom. I argued that the British
government were failing in their moral and
practical responsibility to over 19% of the UK
population (12 million) living with one or more
disabilities1. This conclusion has been rendered
alarmingly relevant in light of the recent, yet
admittedly failed, provisions of the 2016
Conservative budget which threatened to make
cuts of £4.4bn to disability benefits. Reportedly,
under this budget more than 600,000 disabled
people would be affected3, with 370,000 people
losing out on an average of £3,500 a year. Why
then, did the Government think they could get
away with passing an atrociously unjust budget
that further alienates an already underprivileged
group in society? I would assert, quite simply,
that it’s because we’ve allowed the Government
to relentlessly and unreservedly evaded their
responsibilities to the disabled population in the
United Kingdom for years, and in doing so we’re
as much to blame for their increasing plight. Our
political authority is both a right and privilege
too often taken for granted at the expense of the
underrepresented and voiceless; the
marginalised and oppressed. This has to change,
and the Conservative budgetary U-Turn
represents a step in the right direction as the
Disabling the Disabled
Robert Gordon
population of Great Britain rallied behind their
disabled kin in opposing the budget’s
horrifically regressive proposals.
The rights of disabled people in the UK are
protected under the legal framework of the
2010 Equality Act 6. Briefly, my argument from
December1 was that the Act fails to respond
effectively to the needs and aspirations of
disabled people. Moreover, the current
national legislation fails to measure up to the
UK’s international commitment to the
standards outlined in the Convention on the
Rights of People with Disabilities (CRPD)
which we as a nation ratified in 2009.
Worryingly, where the UK’s legal framework is
notably failing to protect the disabled
population, there is an equally concerning
dichotomy between the protection of their
rights de jure and de facto. The inadequate
implementation of the Act’s measures has
further enabled the perpetuation of
inequalities, harassment, and exclusionary
barriers which disadvantage the disabled
community.
The exclusionary nature of society is mirrored
in the UK’s political establishment. Reportedly,
physical barriers at two-thirds of 1,000 polling
stations surveyed in the 2010 General

Elections significantly inhibited disabled people
exercising their political right to vote. Moreover, a
study8 revealed that disabled people feel less
confident of their ability to influence politics.
Perhaps this is no surprise considering their
distinct underrepresentation in parliament,
where only two MPs currently self-describe as
having a disability. This is far from representative
of the 19% of the UK population identified with a
disability.
Evidently, the plight of disabled people in the UK
is truly a sorry story. They wouldn’t, however, want
us feeling sorry for them. It is not our place to pity
those who, through no fault of their own, are
disabled by the society they are born into. As we
strive to empower women in overcoming the
institutional inequalities which inhibit their
potential, we should similarly seek to maintain
the dignity of those with physical or mental
impairments that prevent their full participation
in a fundamentally exclusionary society.
The government’s U-Turn on the disability cuts in
the 2016 budget was a huge success for humanity
in the UK, but the problems faced daily by this
marginalised group will persist. Indeed, the
Conservative Party’s austerity measures have
been disproportionately and relentlessly
impacting the disabled community for the last 6
years, and will inevitably continue to do so. If
there was any doubt before, it can no longer be
contested that the British government are
deliberately and knowingly neglecting the
legitimate needs of a large, yet unfortunately
ostracised, portion of society. It is now as
important as ever to remember the claim that
economic considerations must never be
allowed to prevail over human rights, ever.

How alienable are universal human rights? In a
state of exception such as an ‘unprecedented
refugee crisis’: quite so. The response of the
European Union (EU) and its Member States (MS)
to the humanitarian crisis at the doorsteps of
Europe is a story of exclusion, of forcing people
fleeing death and torture into illegality, and
subsequently branding them ‘illegal’ or ‘irregular’
migrants to justify policies that contradict the very
core-values the EU is built upon.
To make sense of these above accusations, one
has to start with the current EU-Turkey deal, and
learn about the principle of ‘non-refoulement’.
The principle itself is a central tenet of
international refugee law, meaning asylum
seekers cannot be sent back to a country deemed
unsafe. The EU-Turkey deal aims at alleviating the
stream of migrants reaching Greece by having
refugees arriving in Greece from Turkey sent back
to Turkey to apply for asylum there. This, however,
is problematic for a number of reasons. The first
lies with how many EU MS consider Turkey a safe
country of origin. Currently, it is only one: Bulgaria.
How does EU law define a safe country of origin?
Without going into too many technicalities: the
country has to fulfil a set of criteria, one being to
adhere to the Geneva Convention. Turkey only
partially adheres to the Convention, with non-
European asylum seekers being limited to
‘temporary asylum’, ie: a Syrian, Iraqi or Afghani
person cannot receive full refugee status in
Turkey.
Whilst the deal foresees for each Syrian
returned to Turkey there being one registered
Syrian (temporary-)refugee from Turkey to be
sent back to the EU, what happens to the other
55% of refugees arriving at Europe’s shores,
namely Iraqi and Afghani ones that make up
the bulk of them? Whilst the chances of an Iraqi
receiving refugee status in the EU hover around
80%, it is less than 3% in Turkey. Moreover,
there are reports trickling in of mass-returns of
asylum seekers back to Syria and Iraq, despite
the EU and Turkey’s pledges against such
practices. Ultimately, what this means is that
the EU is effectively sentencing, and complicit
in, (non-)Syrians to face expulsion back into the
conditions they escaped from: persecution,
torture, and death.
If that sounds overly dramatic, it helps looking
at research emerging from the EU’s handling of
the Mediterranean refugee route. Following the
end of the search & rescue mission of the Italian
navy, and a lack of MS willing to support the
Italian efforts, the EU initiated Operation Triton.
In contrast to the previous mission, this one was
explicitly not concerned with search &
Alienable human rights and national
sovereignty: the European migrant-crisis
Mathieu Lohr

rescue, but instead about border security. The
‘Death by Rescue’ report’ finds that lawmakers
knew about the impact this new mission would
have on death at sea, “creat[ing] the conditions
that led to massive loss of life” through
“institutionalised wilful neglect”, that the report
concludes can be called “killing by omission”.
This runs in parallel to policy decisions that make
access to the European asylum system quasi-
impossible in legal ways: Hungary and others are
closing their borders and erecting walls that make
land-routes impossible or highly dangerous to use,
and the EU focuses on closing sea-routes by
destroying smugglers’ boats, replacing ‘search and
rescue’ missions with border security ones, and
NATO being called in to destroy human traffickers’
vessels. At the same time, there exist barely any
‘legal’ alternatives due to it being virtually
impossible to claim asylum unless one touches EU
ground - its own and sponsored ‘hotspots’ in third
countries are chronically understaffed,
underfunded, and reportedly breaching human
rights on multiple counts. With northern MS
unwilling to share the burden facing Europe’s
periphery, Greece and Italy are turned into what
are essentially country-sized detention centres.
Meanwhile, the Charter of Fundamental Rights
that is legally binding on all MS is reduced to ink
on paper.
Giorgio Agamben calls this “the separation
between humanitarianism and politics, (...) the
separation of the rights of man from the rights of
the citizen.” The state’s power, and the
manifestation of national sovereignty, is to define
whose life is worth bearing rights, and whose isn’t.
In this context, the EU and its members are
intent on not allowing access to basic human
rights for those fleeing towards our borders.
Instead, both material and amaterial borders
are enforced or erected that leave asylum
seekers with no other choice than to resort to
‘illegal’ means, creating a political narrative of
‘irregular’ and ‘illegal’ migrants reaching us.
Branded as such, their ‘unprecedented
numbers’ allow for the declaration of a state of
exception that sanctions policies which
suspend their most basic rights, be that the
right to seeking asylum, non-refoulement,
being implicit in forcing asylum seekers into
slave-labour (see reports from Turkey, Libya and
Syria), detention centres that ramped up the
‘legal’ length of detention from months to years
to quasi indefinite detention, and so on and so
forth. In short, the rule of law as such is
suspended and rendered void, at least for non-
citizens. To Agamben, the faith of refugees,
non-citizens, is to be reduced to ‘bare life’, a
term speaking for itself. The camps, or centres,
we see sprawling on the other hand are to him
the byproduct of when the state of exception
becomes the rule, where they exist outside the

jurisdiction of law. Given the length of the current
crisis, and there being no short-term change in
sight to the EU’s response to it, this state of
exception and its exclusionary practices are
cementing themselves as the new ‘normal’.
What brought us here? Hannah Arendt identifies
the exclusionary character of modern nation-states
as being fundamentally incompatible with human
rights, specifically those of minorities and the
stateless. She draws her conclusions from the
persecution of Jews in the lead-up to the second
world war. By 1938, Jews were denied citizenship
and rendered stateless in Germany , prosecuted in
most other states as ‘unwanted elements’
threatening social cohesion, and the resulting
refugee streams were unable to find safe harbour in
third countries. Meanwhile, the international
community limited itself to condemning Germany’s
treatment of its Jewish population, and internal
political pressure forced the US to eventually
convene a conference of 32 countries to find a
solution to the issue. However, the Evian
Conference neither included Jewish
representatives at the negotiation table, nor did it
yield results. The attending countries limited
themselves to declaring sympathy with the
persecuted, but being unable to take in any more
refugees.
To Arendt, this exemplifies the logic of national
sovereignty as being inherently exclusionary: only
on a federal level outside the confines of a ‘national’
context and its national narratives could the
interests of minorities be given proper expression.
Whilst Arendt wrote on the exclusion of groups
within nation-states, today’s crisis is much more
about the exclusion of people from outside of it.
Nonetheless, Arendt’s conclusion still holds true:
with the inside and outside inherently linked,
the EU itself, more a union of states than a
federal one, exhibits the same exclusionary
practices than we’d expect from a traditional
nation-state. Moreover, the parallels between the
Evian Conference and today’s response to the
migrant crisis are glaring. Specifically, it is the
reluctance of MS to reforming the Common
European Asylum System to include burden-
sharing in whatever form that supports this view.
Despite early predictions of dramatic rises in
numbers of refugees in coming months and
years early on, and a need for either a quota
system or at the very least a dramatic increase in
support to border-countries, reform attempts by
the European Commission got repeatedly
vetoed by MS. No substantial support in the
form of financial or human resources was
provided. This fits a pattern of policy decision
that, as the Death by Rescue report shows, make
MS implicit in the humanitarian disaster that has
been unfolding over the past few years.
This begs another question: what are the internal
processes within nations that lead to these
decisions being taken? We concluded earlier
that the rule of law is not sovereign during a
declared state of emergency, but neither are the
politicians who declared it. Above all, it is short-
term electoral cycles and a shift in the political
narrative towards the right that explain the
current state of affairs. The fallout from the
financial crisis, rising islamophobia, and the
attacks in Paris and Brussels, have had profound
impacts on

national politics across the EU. For once, established
parties’ grasp on power has been seriously
contested or overthrown by right-wing populist
parties. Their answer to voters flocking to populist
parties offering simple nativist answers to complex
problems was adopting similar stances, essentially
pushing the mainstream political narrative further
towards the right. Obvious examples are France’s
President Hollande adapting extreme right-wing
policies of questionable effectivity in response to the
Paris attacks, the recent Danish, Austrian, Swedish,
and Polish elections radically dethroning the
establishment of those countries, not to speak of
most Eastern European countries’ views on refugees
and Islam. The inability of the establishment to
connect to their voters, and making a case for the
values they claimed to defend, reduced them to
being paraded around by the very parties and
policies they sought to ward off in the first place. In
brief: whoever controls the political narrative is
sovereign. The crucial question at hand then is how
autonomous and self-reinforcing the current
narrative is, and what is to be done about it.
This is specifically problematic to all those seeking
to uphold the idea of public deliberation. With the
rise of populist parties we are also observing the
fragmentation of society into distinct echo-
chambers that barely communicate between each
other. What does this say about the state and
quality of our democracies? If we are in favour of
translating human rights values into practice, are we
in need of a strong leader who sways the masses,
instead of the masses swaying weak politicians? Do
people simply seek an illiberal form of societal
organisation, and isn’t it all too simple to
call the masses scared and ignorant? What about
the long-term? Surely, an open-doors policy
cannot be the sole answer to today’s and future
refugee crises: what about long-term solutions
needed to bring sustained stability to the
countries from which refugee streams originate
from? All of this has a distinct totalitarian and
neocolonial ring to it.
The abundance of questions at hand resemble a
Gordian knot. The linkages between citizenship,
rights, and nation-states, and the
inclusion/exclusion dichotomy that comes along
with them remain unbroken since the Evian
Conference. Arendt’s call for a truly federal
solution remains valid, but is also a call for
something the people of Europe are clearly not
ready for. More worrying still is Agamben’s
assessment of the state of exception allowing to
define whose life is worth protecting, and whose
isn’t. Agamben builds his own work on Carl
Schmitt’s statement of "sovereign is he who
decides on the exception.” Yet within the context
of the current crisis, this ‘sovereign’ is diffuse, it is
not a single leader, nor is it an identifiable
independent body of individuals.
The solutions then are limited by their maximalist
utopian character: anything short of a benevolent
dictatorship, or a truly cosmopolitan democratic
response to the issues at hand will be unable to go
beyond existing limitations. Only by redefining the
organisation of society from the ground up
outside traditional concepts such as citizenship
and nation can this crisis be overcome and
universal values become more than ink on paper.
These are neither revolutionary new proposals,

, nor are they realistic. Yet the only viable alternative
seems to be that of a cynic: accept the limitations of
our current political organisation for radical change,
accept our complicity in the migrant crisis, and
accept that illiberalism will once more define the
trajectory of history. Fukuyama’s owl of Minerva has
yet to find rest.

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