One of the major themes of the current election campaign is the attempt by Rishi Sunak to draw a dividing line between the Tories and Labour on the issue of immigration, particularly when it comes to the Rwanda scheme. Today, the Conservative party sought to highlight the issue in its manifesto.
The manifesto claims a Conservative government would: ‘stop the boats by removing illegal migrants to Rwanda’, ‘stop illegal migrants bringing spurious legal challenges’ and ‘work with other countries to rewrite asylum treaties’. It also repeated a slogan that Sunak had previously trailed at the first televised debate with Keir Starmer that ‘if we are forced to choose between our security and the jurisdiction of a foreign court, including the European Court of Human Rights, we will always choose our security’.
Rishi Sunak’s attempt to weaponise the issue of immigration and human rights as an election issue is not going very well
In truth, Rishi Sunak’s attempt to weaponise the issue of immigration and human rights as an election issue is not going very well. During the first televised debate, Sunak made clear that he was willing to pull the UK out of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) if the Rwanda policy did not work. The problem with this approach is that it presents Sunak with a serious credibility issue.
Boris Johnson was able to use the Supreme Court’s controversial judgment – which found that parliament had been unlawfully prorogued – to claim that elites, anti-Brexit campaigners and judges were seeking to stop the UK leaving the EU. His slogan, ‘Get Brexit Done’ clearly had resonance with the electorate and cut through.
By contrast, Sunak chose to call an election before the courts ruled on his revised Rwanda scheme. Last month, in a case brought by the FDA trade union, he was forced to admit that the government did not intend to carry out any removal flights before 24 July. In those circumstances, Sunak can hardly blame the courts, or the ECHR, for his failure to remove anyone under the new treaty with Rwanda.
His troubles do not end there. Anyone familiar with the Conservative party’s hapless attempts to reform human rights laws will be rather cynical about Sunak’s pitch.
Several previous Conservative manifestos have promised change when it comes to human rights, but very little has been delivered. In 2010, the pledge was to ‘replace the Human Rights Act with a UK Bill of Rights’. In 2015 the Conservatives said they would ‘scrap the Human Rights Act and curtail the role of the European Court of Human Rights’. In 2017 the promise was to ‘consider our human rights framework when the process of leaving the EU concludes’. While in 2019 Boris Johnson said that the government would ‘update the Human Rights Act.’
In the event, the Conservatives have only ended up carrying out reviews, consultations, commissions, and Dominic Raab’s abortive attempt to pass a new Bill of Rights Bill (which was eventually withdrawn in 2023).
These unimplemented commitments relate to the UK’s domestic human rights laws. As I have previously explained, the process of leaving the ECHR is more problematic, since a UK exit would lead to a breach of the Good Friday Agreement and the potential breakdown of law enforcement and judicial cooperation with the EU (for example, extradition is dependent upon the UK’s adherence to the ECHR). These points are rarely addressed by politicians, but a party of government would have to take them into account.
Voters are also likely to recall that many Conservative MPs (including current ministers such as Alex Chalk and Victoria Prentis) simply do not support the idea of leaving the ECHR. Any attempt to weaponise the issue over the course of the election has the potential to backfire if candidates do not stick to the party line. This may explain the rather ambivalent words on the ECHR in the latest manifesto.
The only real Conservative success story in this area was Ken Clarke’s move to reform the ECHR at the time of the Brighton Declaration in 2012. This was hailed as a ‘landmark agreement’ which would mean fewer cases were heard by the Strasbourg Court and that it would not intervene where the domestic courts had properly applied the ECHR. The parties agreed a new protocol to the ECHR recognising, amongst other things, that the primary responsibility for protecting human rights under the convention falls to each individual state. The fact that the UK could successfully lobby states on the Council of Europe to make changes to the ECHR now seems to have been forgotten.
The real difficulty that Sunak will now face is the emergence of Reform on his right flank. Reform has already promisedto leave the ECHR, reform the Human Rights Act, and establish a British Bill of Rights to codify and guarantee our freedoms. Anyone who finds this issue electorally significant might rightly conclude that Nigel Farage seems rather more liable to deliver.
Given the current opinion polling, it seems likely that supporters of the ECHR (of which I would include myself) have little to worry about over the next five years. But no government remains in power forever and the questions about the democratic legitimacy of human rights laws are becoming increasingly polarising. This is particularly the case when it comes to claims that the Strasbourg court is too activist on political issues such as immigration and climate change. It is notable that rather than simply wishing to repeal ‘Labour’s Human Rights Act’, there is now a real push to exit the ECHR itself by many on the right. Keir Starmer should not be complacent.
If Labour wishes to prevent the issue of the ECHR increasing in political salience, it will need to do rather more than just trying to lecture the public on the benefits of human rights laws, while promising managerialist solutions on issues such as immigration. Keir Starmer might be wise to take inspiration from Ken Clarke and examine whether any further reforms to the ECHR might be agreed with fellow Council of Europe members. This could avoid new claims of court overreach on contentious matters – before a consensus emerges on the right that leaving the ECHR would be the better option.
Watch more manifesto analysis from Katy Balls, Kate Andrews, and James Heale on Spectator TV:
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