Following last month’s local elections disaster, Kemi Badenoch’s team promised a ‘step change’. So just 24 hours after Shadow Chancellor Mel Stride offered a ‘mea culpa’ for the mini-Budget, Badenoch has followed up by suggesting that the UK ‘will likely need to leave’ the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). It comes amid a hardening of internal Tory opinion on the subject, following both a number of high-profile rulings by British courts and a surge in illegal migration.
‘I do believe that we will likely need to leave’, Badenoch said
Badenoch’s argument is as follows: foreign criminals, convicted of horrific abuse, currently cannot be deported. The ECHR is now being used in ways never intended by its original authors. Various nations are seeking reform of the Convention, but, alas, the Strasbourg institutions show no interest in permitting such an exercise. Given the urgent need to deter illegal migrants, it is therefore necessary to seriously consider leaving the ECHR. However, it must be done so with a clear plan.
This is much the same argument that she made during the leadership race last summer. However, she has now signalled her operating assumption. Withdrawing from the ECHR was previously one option; now it is viewed as her most likely outcome for the UK.
‘I do believe that we will likely need to leave’, she told the RUSI think tank today. This operating assumption will shape the outcome of the ongoing commission into this subject, due to report at the autumn Tory conference. It will be led by Lord Wolfson, the Shadow Attorney General, who has signalled his support of the ECHR.
Within the Conservative party, there is now a growing expectation that Badenoch will formally back departure from the ECHR when that commission finally reports. It follows a similar speech on Net Zero which she gave in March, in which she shifted her party to a more critical stance from that adopted by Boris Johnson. Badenoch’s Net Zero speech went down well with much of her party, with little in the way of public pushback from her own MPs.
On the thornier question of ECHR membership, she clearly judges that her party is now in a similar mood to reconsider shibboleths of old. The likes of some vocal supporters of the Convention – such as former Attorney General Victoria Prentis and ex-Lord Chancellor Alex Chalk – were cleared out from the Commons at the last election. Yet sceptics certainly remain. Some, like Jesse Norman, have previously backed the principles of the Convention; others are worried about the practicalities.
One major influence is likely to be Alex Burghart, the Tory spokesman on Northern Ireland. He is as close to Badenoch as any on the Tory frontbench and will be deeply concerned about what withdrawing from the ECHR means for the Good Friday Agreement. If he and Wolfson can find a politically sellable way to square that particular circle, expect to see Badenoch formally endorse withdrawal from the Convention, come October this year.
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