There is an old, almost stubborn, principle at the heart of the British legal tradition: the law applies generally. Not selectively. Not tribally. Not according to who arrived in 1066 and who arrived in 2016.
From the common law courts that evolved after William the Conqueror planted his Norman flag, through the constitutional settlement following the Glorious Revolution, the central tenet has been that the Crown’s law binds all within the realm. The doctrine of equality before the law is not decorative rhetoric; it is the structural steel of the system.
A murder is a murder. The offence is defined in general terms. The penalty applies irrespective of whether the accused is called Smith, Singh, Okonkwo or O’Reilly. That is not accidental. It is the point.
The Generality Principle
In jurisprudential terms, this is sometimes described as the “generality principle”: laws are framed in abstract, universal language and apply to all persons within jurisdiction. The genius of the common law was precisely that it avoided codifying caste.
Britain never formally adopted a racialised dual legal system of the kind seen in South Africa under apartheid. There were injustices, certainly. There were discriminatory policies. But the architecture of the legal order did not enshrine separate criminal codes for “indigenous” and “non-indigenous” residents.
That distinction matters.
The New Agitation: Two Laws for Two Peoples
Yet there is a growing murmur—sometimes a shout—from segments of the right, and the far and extreme right, that the universality of law is itself the problem.
The campaign for the UK to withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights, championed by some within the Reform UK and echoed by factions of the Conservative Party, is often framed in the language of sovereignty. “Take back control.” “British courts for British people.”
But beneath the sovereignty slogan lies irritation at generality.
The Convention—incorporated domestically via the Human Rights Act 1998—does something profoundly simple: it protects “everyone” within the jurisdiction. Not just citizens. Not just those with ancestral claims to the soil. Everyone.
Refugees may invoke Article 3 protections against torture. Migrants may rely on Article 8 family life rights. Detainees may challenge unlawful confinement. The language is universal because human rights law is premised on the inherent dignity of the person, not the passport.
For some, that universality grates. The discomfort is not with lawlessness, but with foreigners accessing the same legal tools as “natives.”
The Logical Problem
Here is where the agitation becomes jurisprudentially incoherent.
If you dismantle the general application of law—if you say rights attach only to certain classes—you have not merely removed rights from “them.” You have weakened the structural guarantee for “you.”
Once Parliament asserts that legal protections are conditional upon identity, status or origin, the protective shield ceases to be principled and becomes political. Today the excluded category may be asylum seekers. Tomorrow it may be dual nationals. The day after, it may be dissenters.
The rule of law functions because it is impersonal. Once it becomes sectional, it is no longer the rule of law but the rule of preference.
Those who fantasise about a bifurcated legal order—a soft-focus, nostalgia-tinted version of South Africa’s stratified legality—forget the central paradox: apartheid did not make the dominant group legally safer in the abstract. It made the state more powerful and less accountable. And states that are less accountable rarely remain permanently benevolent.
Social Amenities and Resentment
The grievance often extends beyond criminal law into welfare and public services. There is resentment that individuals held in cultural contempt—“foreigners”—may access housing support, healthcare, or social assistance.
But again, the system operates on general criteria: lawful residence, contribution, vulnerability, need. It is not a feudal entitlement scheme reserved for a bloodline.
The irony is delicious. The same voices that praise the majesty of British law recoil when its majesty refuses to discriminate.
The Double-Edged Sword
The clamour for differentiated legal treatment is a double-edged sword disguised as patriotism.
If the state is authorised to create two classes of persons before the law, it is also authorised to redefine those classes. Legal status becomes fluid. Political favour becomes decisive. Rights become revocable.
In such a system, nobody possesses rights as of right; they merely enjoy privileges until the mood changes.
The British constitutional tradition—uncodified, evolutionary, pragmatic—has endured precisely because it resisted that temptation. Its strength lies not in ethno-national preference but in legal abstraction.
The law does not ask where your grandparents were born before it protects you from arbitrary detention or wrongful conviction. And once it starts asking, everyone should be nervous.
Those who wish for two sets of laws may believe they are defending the nation. In reality, they are loosening the bolts that hold their own protections in place.
Equality before the law is not a concession to foreigners. It is the insurance policy of citizens.
Centre for Nigeria Progress 