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Notes -
There are multiple possible explanations here. Regarding the Chagos Islands, the ICJ made a direct ruling requiring the UK to take a specific action. Locking up people for free speech might go against the spirit of some international law or other but unless he was specifically ordered not to I could imagine him feeling less constrained by that. It also wouldn't surprise me if he personally feels the jurisdiction of international law is solely that covering disputes between nation states, and not domestic affairs. He might also feel that as PM, he's in a sense above the law as it relates to domestic issues, but that international law as decided by various global bodies exists on a higher level that the UK must be subservient to. Someone showing authoritarian tendencies when they have power but being a stickler for rules imposed on them by what they feel to be higher bodies isn't displaying a particularly unusual personality type.
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