These days, a Graduate in Diploma is a worthy course for any non-law graduate wishing to study the basics of English law, including the criminal law, law of torts, land law, the law of equity and trusts, and the law of contract.

Imagine how useful such a Diploma might be especially if your job included some component of understanding constitutional and public law (including judicial review or human rights), or even some working knowledge, you could apply, in European Union law.

Does this Diploma fetter you into a career you don’t wish to pursue? Of course not, ask any of the graduates of the Diploma (or the Legal Practice Course or Bar Vocational Training Course) who are unable to get a training contract at a firm of solicitors or a set of chambers of barristers.

But imagine if you needed this knowledge to become Home Secretary, having done a degree in geography. You would able to discuss these matters with ‘relevant stakeholders’, as your Human Resources teams will tell you. ‘Relevant stakeholders’ might not be restricted to the Conservative Party or big cash donors, but might include groups campaigning for the application of universal human rights such as Liberty, or even the European Court when discussing how to implement the law giving prisoners a right to vote proportionately. That is of course assuming you wish to obey the Rule of Law.

The gaffe about the pussycat was pretty poor. James Welch in the Guardian puts it hilariously:

“”I’m not making this up,” said the home secretary, as she regaled the Tory faithful with yet another Human Rights Act folly: an “illegal immigrant” could not be deported because he had a cat.

I’ll be charitable and accept this wasn’t a wilful misrepresentation. But if so, someone in her department evidently failed to brief her on one of its own cases (still “not fit for purpose” eh?)

I’ll start with a minor point: the man, a Bolivian, was not an “illegal immigrant”. He came to this country quite legally as a student but stayed beyond the expiration of his visa – perhaps May thought that distinction would be lost on a conference audience.

More significantly, his right to remain in this country had nothing to do with his cat. For four years before his case came before the immigration courts the man lived with a British woman. They did all those coupley things: bought crockery, went out clubbing, got a pet cat. When it came to wanting to regularise the man’s right to stay in this country – and anticipating immigration officials’ inevitable scepticism – the shared cat was one of a number of factors used by the couple as evidence their relationship was genuine.”

But that wasn’t the worst of it by any standards. In an incredible flourish, May at the weekend provided, according to Ben Quinn an equally absurd claim also in the Guardian:

“The home secretary is to ask MPs to pass a motion declaring that the right to a family life – enshrined in Article 8 of the European convention on human rights – is not absolute.”

This is of course completely laughable for most lawyers, and as if it needed confirming it is stated clearly on the relevant page of the Liberty website.  The BBC then repeated the settled stand in our law:

“And civil rights group Liberty said the right to family life was already qualified, allowing “considerable latitude over immigration control and the economic well-being of the nation”.”

I think somebody should put me out-of-my-misery, and we should have a whip-round for Theresa May to do the GDL (see tweet). I know many who would happily contribute.