Straw's green paper makes clear that while a bill of rights would extend the coverage of the Human Rights Act to social and economic rights, such as free healthcare, it would stop short of making them newly legally enforceable in the courts.
Instead Straw hopes that by bringing together existing social and economic rights "currently scattered across the UK's legal and political landscape" in one collected document he will be able to "entrench progressive values for the long term".
Heh. I've spoke about Straw before (indeed on this very issue) and the man has a knack for appearing to say/do something whilst actually saying/doing nothing at all.
I think the big question is can there be a politics of 'rights' that represents a permanent, collective intervention of the oppressed into the political scence. And would such a politics of rights not represent a transcendence of rights as we know them?
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