Why leaving the ECHR would be a bad idea for Britain
The next litmus test of Tory purity
In an ideal world, bad ideas would fade into irrelevance. In Britain’s ruling Conservative Party, they have a good chance of becoming official policy. Divorce the country’s largest trading partner? Sure. Send asylum-seekers to Africa? Let’s do it. Now there is momentum behind another scheme: leaving the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
The ECHR is a set of individual rights and freedoms that Britain was the first country to sign up to after the second world war. For chunks of the Tory party, the ECHR has long been an irritant; now it is an affront. In 2022 the court that enforces it blocked flights deporting asylum-seekers to Rwanda; this week Parliament passed a through-the-looking-glass law designating Rwanda a safe country and allowing ministers to ignore similar injunctions. Rishi Sunak, the prime minister, warned that no “foreign court” would stop the Rwanda scheme from getting off the ground. Leaving the ECHR will almost certainly be a litmus test for leadership candidates if Mr Sunak is turfed out at the next election.
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This article appeared in the Leaders section of the print edition under the headline "Brechrit?"
From the April 27th 2024 edition
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