[SEMW]

> However, courts ultimately derive their principles of justice from the values and traditions of a people.

That's a valid POV, but it can hardly be stated as fact. For example, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights owes its existence to a broad consensus that, actually, certain fundamental principles of human rights are universal, and a South African has as much of a right to not be tortured by his government as an Englishman does. Of course, not everyone agrees, but denying any kind of universal quality to human rights is a fairly... niche form of cultural relativism.

> That's why international tribunals can have no legitimacy.

Aaand that's just a non-sequitur. The ECtHR has legal legitimacy to rule on UK issues because the UK voluntarily signed the ECHR. Its rulings do not have direct effect in the UK, but have a certain amount of indirect effect nevertheless because Parliament passed a law in 1998 giving them that. (FWIW, since then, the ECHR - which was mostly drafted by an Englishman - can also be enforced domestically in UK courts, and the ECtHR have only rarely overruled UK courts on ECHR interpretation issues).

So the situation here is the executive (GCHQ) possibly acting in violation of the will of Parliament (as expressed in the HRA1998). Parliament has delegated the task of deciding when the executive has violated its law to various judicial bodies, domestic and international. That's not subverting democracy. It's enforcing it.

[gadders]

> which was mostly drafted by an Englishman

And unfortunately interpreted by activist judges from the continent.

[tptacek]

It's probably not enforcing democracy, since polls seem to show a overwhelming majority of Britons have problems with the ECHR.

[SEMW]

I could take issue with this implicit identification of 'democracy' with 'issue-by-issue 50%-majoritarian direct democracy' (i.e. the idea that democracy is whatever a >50% majority in a referendum would currently show on each issue taken separately). Many countries flirt with some elements of direct democracy (Switzerland goes furthest, that I know of), but none go that far. So the implication that that's the actual true form of democracy is arguably a bit silly.

...And this is getting perilously close to philosophical wankery over competing definitions of the word 'democracy', which doesn't make for a very interesting discussion, so I should probably stop there :)