Who decides who gets to come to the UK? It is now abundantly clear that control over Britain’s borders is no longer held by the British government or our parliament – institutions that, whatever their faults, are at least accountable to the British people. Instead, decisions about migration, asylum and borders are now largely the domain of unelected judges and activist lawyers – people who are accountable to no one and are under no obligation to even consider the national interest.

Few cases better illustrate this yawning democratic deficit than a judge’s recent decision to allow a Gazan family to resettle in the UK via a scheme that was intended for Ukrainian refugees. As the Telegraph reports this week, the family of six applied for resettlement last year, but their claim was refused by a lower-tier immigration tribunal, which ruled that it should be up to parliament to decide who should benefit from the UK’s resettlement schemes (recent country-specific schemes have also covered Afghanistan, Hong Kong and Syria). This ruling was then overturned by upper-tribunal judge Hugo Norton-Taylor. His judgment, published at the end of January, cites the European Convention on Human Rights and, specifically, the Article 8 ‘right to a family life’. (The Gazan family at the centre of the case have a brother in the UK who they have had no face-to-face contact with for 17 years.)

Norton-Taylor’s judgement is a masterclass in judicial activism. The Home Office, contesting the case, warned that allowing Gazans to resettle via the Ukraine Family Scheme would open the ‘floodgates’ to applicants – not only from Palestine, but also from potentially any conflict zone around the world. The judge decreed that this was not ‘a relevant consideration’. In any case, ‘even if it was capable of relevance’, he continues, it would be ‘speculative and misconceived’ to suggest that others might spy a loophole for getting into Britain. The judge also ruled that the rights of the six Gazans should outweigh any considerations of the broader ‘public interest’ at all.