The drumbeats get louder as the call of the wild pulses through the blood of the Conservative party again. The front page of the Telegraph on Thursday splashes, “Cabinet call on PM to ditch ECHR”. On their headcount, a third of the British cabinet want to join Russia and Belarus as pariah states outside the European convention on human rights.
Downing Street says no, but others report the prime minister wavering. This is exactly how Brexit happened – and that’s the spirit the Braverman tendency hopes to reprise, with all the nativism, the xenophobia, the British “sovereignty” phantasm and even talk of another referendum, which could slice the country into two broken halves. They imagine this could save their party, or at least their own seats, at the next election.
Alarmingly, Steve Reed, the shadow justice secretary, tells me Labour’s focus groups suggest that many at first back the idea, after years of bogus stories from the Tories and their press. Those human rights myths last for ever in the public memory. Remember Theresa May, as home secretary, claiming a Bolivian national’s wish to stay with his cat prevented his deportation by upholding his human right to a family life? It concerned his permanent relationship with his partner, not his cat. Kenneth Clarke, then justice secretary, protested the use of such “laughable and childlike” examples: he didn’t last long in the job.
Showing how far the Tory party has travelled rightwards, Clarke was expelled from the party in 2019 for supporting attempts to avoid a no-deal Brexit, and May – of the “go home or face arrest” vans – is now treated as a “moderate”. The disgusting rabble-rousing language of Lee Anderson, with his “Fuck off back to France” comment, is now the party’s acceptable idiom – approved by the justice secretary, Alex Chalk, as no more than “salty”. Chalk, remember, is the “moderate” replacing the thuggish tones of Dominic Raab.
Once people hear the consequences of leaving the ECHR or abolishing the Human Rights Act (which incorporates the ECHR into domestic law), they change their minds, says Reed, who is confident Labour will see off this threat. Keir Starmer’s reputation is built on his work as a human rights lawyer, which explains the Tory hailstorm of attacks on “lefty lawyers” undermining the “will of the people” by upholding the law.
What sways people? Concrete cases showing the good done by human rights legislation, says Reed, citing focus group research. It was through such legislation that justice for Hillsborough families was won. It’s how “do not resuscitate” orders attached to elderly patients without their consent were removed. The human rights of victims of John Worboys, the black-cab rapist, were upheld when the Met Police were challenged for failing to investigate properly.
Support for the ECHR gains traction when people see the practical importance of it. It was Winston Churchill who promoted the ECHR as a never-again protection against the horrors of the second world war, with Britain persuading others to join. Watching the illegal invasion of Ukraine, why side with Russia as the democratic world unites against this violation? If Britain quit the ECHR, it would lose whatever moral authority it wields in the world; it would be left speechless in the face of China’s draconian treatment of the Uyghurs, Saudi Arabia’s allegedly state-ordered murder of a journalist, or the Taliban’s crushing of women.
The EU withdrawal agreement depends on staying in the ECHR, so leaving would mean losing all cooperation on crime, terror and people smuggling, in a world where only international collaboration keeps people safe. In Northern Ireland, the consequences would be dire: the Good Friday agreement is contingent on belonging to the ECHR: withdrawing would breach an international agreement, its terms guaranteed by Ireland and monitored by a caucus in the US congress. Any chance of a trade deal with the US would vanish.
Those overwhelming arguments win the day – once they get a hearing. But we have learned the hard way from the Brexit referendum that reason and facts are easily blown away by the breathtaking mendacity and downright dishonesty of the right.
The Tories are divided on this, with Bob Neill, who chairs the justice committee, saying that leaving would be “a completely foolish idea and absolutely wrong”. But No 10 is hardly vociferous in defence of human rights. David Cameron thought he could beat Brexiters, whom he called “fruitcakes”, but he gave in time and again, putting that referendum into the manifesto to appease them. If Rishi Sunak does that, it’s likely to stay as Tory policy after an election defeat, waiting for the day they return to power.
This could indeed become the great election tool that Sunak seeks, but he may find its effect catastrophic. After Brexit, so many recognise the damage it has done that this could become the single issue that galvanises all those moderate Tories, all those middle-ground people and all on the left who balk at Labour’s caution, to get out there and ensure Britain never again commits such an act of self-sabotage.
Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist
