Another opportunity to reform the European Court of Human Rights has gone begging

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Remember all those lofty promises to reform the meddlesome European Court of Human Rights?

First the government largely wasted its presidency of the Council of Europe earlier this year, securing only modest changes which do nothing to stop the unelected Strasbourg court holding two fingers aloft to the sovereignty of the British Parliament.

Now a second opportunity has gone begging.

Splendidly arrogant: Sir Nicolas Bratza is stepping down as Britain's representative at the European Court of Human Rights

Sir Nicolas Bratza, the splendidly arrogant outgoing British judge sitting at the court, is not going to be replaced by a radical reformer.

No, it has just been announced that the £150,000-a-year tax free post – nice work, if you can get it – is going to a lifelong Eurocrat who has never been a judge in Britain.

The wheels on the Euro bus go round and round, with the well-paid passengers stopping only to thumb their nose at Westminster’s impotent political class.

Lifelong eurocrat: Paul Mahoney (left) will take Sir Nicolas Bratza's place

Paul Mahoney, an academic, worked for the Council of Europe, which runs the human rights court, for more than 30 years.

He was the court's registrar - its senior staff lawyer - from 2001 to 2005, during which time it has handed down some of its most notorious judgments, including granting the vote to prisoners.

Mr Mahoney was also the deputy registrar – or legal advisor – to the panel of Euro judges which ruled in 1999 that Jon Venables and Robert Thompson did not receive a fair trial for the killing of James Bulger, and that it was not up to the Home Secretary to set a tariff - or minimum punishment period - for the pair.

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To widespread outrage, the court awarded costs and expenses of £15,000 to Thompson and £29,000 to Venables

But it is comments made by Mr Mahoney in academic papers which are causing most alarm at Westminster.

The Prime Minister has repeatedly called for Euro judges to meddle less in Britain’s affairs and respect the sovereignty of Parliament.

'Precisely the wrong candidate': Conservative MP Dominic Raab has criticised Mr Mahoney's appointment

But Mr Mahoney is quoted as saying that: ‘The open textured language and the structure of the (European) Convention (on Human Rights) leave the Court significant opportunities for choice in interpretation’.

He goes on: ‘In exercising that choice, particularly when faced with changed circumstances and attitudes in society, the Court makes new law’.

Mr Mahoney has also written of the inevitably of a degree of ‘judicial activism’.

The Tory MP Dominic Raab, himself an international lawyer, says: ‘I am sure he is a decent man.

‘But, if the government is serious about curbing the intrusions of Strasbourg Court, and restoring UK democratic control, he is precisely the wrong candidate.

‘Someone who has spent over 30 years working in the Strasbourg court as in-house counsel, at a time of massive judicial legislation, is hardly the guy to rein it in.

‘It is like putting the fox in charge of the chicken coop.’

Perhaps the most depressing fact is that the Ministry of Justice was unable to come up with a single candidate who has been a judge in Britain.

Under the court’s rules, the British government nominates three contenders, with the final say going to the Council of Europe.

The list we sent to Strasbourg was Mr Mahoney, Ben Emmerson QC - who has defended terror suspects including radical Islamic cleric Abu Qatada  - and Raquel Agnello QC, an insolvency and pensions specialist.

The pity, as Mr Raab points out,  is that they didn’t go for the insolvency expert. Europe could certainly use one of those.