Police have arrested a man suspected of sending a series of racist messages to Gina Miller, a businesswoman behind a legal challenge to the country’s plans to quit the European Union, or Brexit.
Miller, 51, has been scrutinised by the media and public since she challenged Prime Minister Theresa May’s plans to trigger the country’s EU departure without consulting lawmakers in the high court.
Born in Guyana, Miller revealed after the initial hearing in November that she had been the target of racist online trolls.
The torrent of abuse included jibes that “I should be beheaded, gang-raped, I’m not even human, I’m a primate, I belong in a kitchen – that’s the nicest of them,” she told BBC Radio 5 Live.
London’s Metropolitan Police confirmed yesterday that a 55-year-old man from Wiltshire, south-west England, had been detained due to threats made online starting on November 3, the day after the High Court ruling.
The man was arrested on suspicion of racially aggravated malicious communications and was later released on bail. Additionally, police issued a ‘cease and desist’ order to a 38-year-old man from Fife, Scotland, on December 3 as part of the same investigation.
The campaign to leave the EU has been accused of stoking racial tensions and inflaming anti-immigrant sentiment, particularly after pro-European lawmaker Jo Cox was murdered on the street by a far-right extremist who shouted “Britain first” one week before the June vote.
The legal challenge has reignited the controversy and provoked heated debate in the British press, with three High Court judges vilified “as enemies of the people” in November after their ruling that the government must seek parliamentary approval before invoking Article 50 and kick-starting the Brexit process.
Ahead of the government’s Supreme Court appeal against that decision this week, right-wing tabloid the Daily Mail published a profile on all 11 judges and gave each of them a “Europhile rating” in a bid to show their bias towards the European Union.
Britain’s highest court is hearing four days of evidence in the government’s appeal against the High Court ruling this week, concluding today.
Earlier yesterday, David Pannick, the lawyer acting for Miller, told the Supreme Court the June referendum, in which Britons voted for Brexit by 52% to 48%, had important political consequences but not legal ones.
“Parliament has deliberately chosen a model which does not involve any binding legal effect,” he told the 11 Supreme Court justices during an exchange on the 2015 act of parliament that set the rules for the referendum to take place.
Pannick argued that the 2015 act did not say what should happen after the referendum, and that since triggering Article 50 would effectively nullify the 1972 act through which Britain joined the EU, only parliament could authorise such a step.
Gina Miller, co-founder of investment fund SCM Private and the lead claimant in the case, reads a statement outside the High Court in central London on November 3, 2016, after winning the legal challenge that Article 50 cannot be triggered without a decision by parliament. The High Court in London ruled on Thursday that parliament, not the government, must approve the start of Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union, in a landmark decision that could delay Brexit.
