‘Get the boats done’ – could there be a referendum on the ECHR?

It’s ‘stop the boats’ week in 10 Downing Street as part of government plans to avoid a news vacuum over the summer recess. There have been a range of announcements – from new measures against businesses that knowingly employ illegal migrants, along with plans to crackdown on ‘lefty lawyers’. However, Rishi Sunak’s problem can be summed up by his deputy chairman Lee Anderson – who declared on Tuesday that the government has ‘failed’ to stop migrants crossing the Channel in small boats. While this is not the official line from the government, it does reflect concerns that Sunak’s pledge to ‘stop the boats’ could end in failure.

It’s why talk of leaving the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) is once again dominating the news. The Telegraph reports that Sunak will face calls from up to a third of his cabinet to put leaving the European Convention on Human Rights in the election manifesto if migrant deportation flights to Rwanda are blocked by the courts. The next court battle is likely to take place in the autumn when the government will go to the Supreme Court to challenge the Court of Appeal’s ruling that the Rwanda scheme is unlawful.

As I have previously reported in The Spectator, a referendum on leaving the ECHR has long been seen in government as an option if progress cannot be made elsewhere. Sunak would first need to be convinced that leaving the ECHR is necessary – for example, if Strasbourg does somehow manage to frustrate the Rwanda scheme or the UK courts find against the government and declare Rwanda an unsafe country.

The Tories could then pledge a referendum on leaving the ECHR in their manifesto, hoping to reconvene the Brexit alliance of voters that delivered the 2019 majority. (The assumption is that the public would support the Rwanda scheme by a margin of two to one.) ‘It’s either stop the boats or leave the ECHR,’ says one senior Tory. ‘We could say “get the boats done” and run a “stop the boats” election,’ argued one government adviser to me earlier this year. They point to the ‘stop the boats’ campaign in Australia, which is viewed by several senior Tories as a way to keep elements of the Johnson electorate on side.

Proponents argue there would be an emotive case to make. It would include other elements of the ECHR which can thwart UK government aims, such as Article 8 that can stop criminal deportations on the basis of the right to family life. One figure close to Sunak suggests that the PM could even campaign to leave the ECHR in the event of a referendum – casting it as a point of high principle, democracy and sovereignty.

However, a referendum on whether to leave the ECHR would divide the Tory party. Attorney General Victoria Prentis is among those who have warned against leaving – the ECHR is written into the Good Friday Agreement and Brexit deal. But if immigration numbers stay high and Sunak can’t stop the boats, it may be the one lever he has left to pull.