The idea that the UK is not deporting enough people is a convenient justification for overhauling the Human Rights Act

Boris Johnson’s government is trying to chip away at your rights, but it wants you to believe that this is only a problem for other people. The police bill threatens the right to protest, but it is presented as a measure to deal with “extremist” political activists. The judicial review bill threatens to curtail the right to judicial review – a process that allows individuals to seek redress from public institutions that may have harmed them – but it is framed as an effort to reclaim power from “unelected” judges. The elections bill, which seeks to introduce voter ID, could effectively disenfranchise 2 million people, but the government claims it will address “fraud”.

Each time the government wishes to push forward with measures such as these, it evokes a folk devil – a threatening outsider or internal enemy whose presence is used to justify the harsh new reform. These folk devils are more myth than reality, but they can cause great social damage if left unchallenged. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the government’s most recent initiative: its wide-ranging plans to overhaul the Human Rights Act, which were announced last week.

Daniel Trilling is the author of Lights in the Distance: Exile and Refuge at the Borders of Europe

This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.