Brexiteers, defend our "Liberal Values" whilst seeking to destroy them

One of the the things about Brexiteers on the right  that bemuses me  is that they often make claims that  our Liberal Traditions" are  under threat from Muslim extremists, whilst supporting laws that echo much of  the draconian elements  they condemn elsewhere.

The announcement that that Ann Widdercombe  has defected to the Brexit party is a case in point. 

As an MP, Widdecombe was known for opposing the legality of abortion, her opposition to various issues of LGBT rights such as an equal age of consent and the repeal of Section 28, her support for the re-introduction of the death penalty, the retention of blasphemy laws .

The same sort of mentality is expressed by those who call for tougher and longer prison sentences , whilst shouting about the treatment of British Prisoners abroad.

But it is not just the far right that has been hypocritical, before the  Afghan Invasion to remove t he Taliban largely under the guise  to dismantle al-Qaeda much was made of the their treatment of Women , whilst ignoring similar policies in "friendly"  government like Saudi Arabia.

Only this week came news that Saudi Arabia on Tuesday beheaded 37 Saudi citizens, most of them minority Shiites, in a mass execution across the country for alleged terrorism-related crimes. It also publicly pinned the executed body and severed head of a convicted Sunni extremist to a pole as a warning to others.

The executions were likely to stoke further regional and sectarian tensions between rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran.

Saudi dissident Ali Al-Ahmed, who runs the Gulf Institute in Washington, identified 34 of those executed as Shiites based on the names announced by the Interior Ministry.

“This is the largest mass execution of Shiites in the kingdom’s history,” he said.

Amnesty International also confirmed the majority of those executed were Shiite men. The rights group said they were convicted “after sham trials” that relied on confessions extracted through torture.

The silence from Western Governments was of course  deafening in comparison  with our attitude to  Iran.

But of course the Saudi's are our allies and as long as they sell us their oil we ignore their human rights abuses.

They also buy our arms and our government sees no problem in this even if these weapons are used to commit genocide in The Yemen.

But how does this relate to Brexit?

Whilst the EU have been lax over human rights abuses . even as close at home as Catalonia, you can only wonder what a Post Brexit UK desperate for trade deals will do .

There  may not be much left of Robin Cook's "Ethical Foreign Policy " which he pushed in the early days of the Blair government, but there certainly will not be one from when we leave the EU and the hypocrisy quotient, will rise even further.