Badenoch to launch review examining whether UK should pull out of ECHR
Kemi Badenoch is expected to set up a review that will look into whether the UK should withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights.
The commission will examine whether Britain should pull out of a series of agreements, it is understood.
It comes ahead of a speech Conservative leader Mrs Badenoch is expected to make on Friday.
The ECHR was a dividing issue in last year’s Conservative leadership election, with Mrs Badenoch’s rival Robert Jenrick championing the idea that Britain should pull out.
Deportation
Mrs Badenoch has stopped short of calling for the UK to leave, but in February she suggested that the UK would “probably” have to withdraw from the convention if it stops the country from doing “what is right”.
She told a London event: “When it comes to the ECHR, I have always been very clear that the ECHR should not stop us from doing what is right for the people of this country and what is right in our national interest.
“And if it continues to do so, at some point we will probably have to leave.
“What I have not agreed with is deciding that we should leave without having a plan for what that looks like and how to do so in a way that makes sense.”
‘Control’
The Convention’s Article 8 – a right to a family life – has been notably used by foreign criminals to avoid deportation from the UK.
The UK Government’s immigration white paper released last month promised legislation to “strengthen the public interest test to make it clear that Parliament needs to be able to control our country’s borders and take back control over who comes to, and stays in the UK”.
Sir Keir Starmer said at the time that the “the right balance” needed to be made between individual rights and “the national interest”.
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The devolution settlements prevent westminster from withdrawing Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland from the ECHR. I had this confirmed by Peter Hain years ago, when he was MP for Neath. This was also confirmed in 2016 by a lords select committee on the UK, the EU and a British bill of rights, chapter 8: the impact of repealing the human rights act on the devolved nations https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld201516/ldselect/ldeucom/139/13911.htm If the next westminster government is set on withdrawing from the ECHR, then it WILL be seeking to do away with devolution. This is the message that needs to be put across to… Read more »
What is desperately needed is an end to first past the post where parties such as Reform can win a majority with a mere 30% of the vote. It is unfit for the 21st century.
I agree, but labour have no intention of bringing in electoral reform, despite a huge amount of support amongst their membership.
They might if they think it’ll stop them joining the Cons in electoral oblivion.
I honestly think labour would sooner condemn us all to a reform government than govern in coalition
Labour is “coalition ready” because it’s already in a permanent coalition with the Co-operative Party. When the era of two party politics finally comes to an end, these two experienced established parties will be ready to go. Of course “partition” of the broad church will be traumatic for some but UK governance will be much better for it. And it won’t have any of the fireworks of the blue team splitting into dark and light blue parties.
She knows she wants a yes. Jenrick will doi the same if he gets power. So will farage. Far right gonna fascist.
Below link are the rights she wants to take away from you and me. And every single person backing this will also want to take away my rights.
They can get lost.
https://www.echr.coe.int/documents/d/echr/Convention_ENG
Astonishing and sinister, but not surprising, that the Cons seem determined to rip up our free speech protections.
If Churchill were alive today he would be spinning in his grave at thought of a leader of his own party wanting to put us in the same category as Russia and Belarus!! What a huge insult to the thousands of armed forces who fought and died fighting Nazism and fascism in the 1940s.
The Cons have never really seen Churchill as one of their own since he only jumped ship from the Liberals for personal gain. True he’d impressed them by deploying the army in Wales and he certainly bailed them out when they enabled war in Europe but his support for a European human rights charter and a united states of Europe were steps too far.
Such a ‘review’ with that agenda would have been absolutely inconceivable way back in the 1960s when I was a teenager and, in those days, tended to support the Conservative party as it was back then. Not that it did them any good in terms of my vote, because in those days you couldn’t vote at all until you were 21 – but at least I stuck up posters for them. But in those long gone days the sort of ideology which Badenoch – and most of what’s left of the Tory party – now embraces was the preserve of… Read more »