To many, the United Kingdom being party to the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR) confers it a moral status of which it should be proud. The layman hears its name and instinctively concludes: “I am European and I believe in human rights, so it’s good that my country is privy to this contract between state and individual”. There is a fierce but profoundly misplaced loyalty. This is because the layman is so infrequently informed of the ways in which the ECHR has wrapped its tendrils tight around our legal system, trashed our national ethic, and threatens to rip our social fabric apart. Those are big words, so let us be clear and specific — the ECHR enables everything from serial child rapists and killers to win better conditions in UK prisons (including taxpayer-funded weddings), to illegal immigrants lying and cheating their way to free housing, education, and financial benefits (like adults pretending to be children). 

Why exactly is such ignorance about ECHR and its consequences so widespread?

Indeed, most of the claims made against the UK via ECHR are not what the majority of people would consider human rights violations. They are usually made by people who arrived here illegally, with the help of taxpayer-funded legal aid lawyers. Their ambition in their claims is to get even more out of a state that already treats them with dignity and generosity. They abuse ECHR to get better hotels and flats, to get more money each week, to get to live in their choice of city. It is a scandal. And yet, the public are by-and-large unaware of the insidious cases that slither through our courts without the political scrutiny they sorely deserve. 

Why exactly is such ignorance about ECHR and its consequences so widespread? It’s partly because politicians like Keir Starmer obfuscate the subject, since they are ideologically committed to ECHR but, more significantly, it’s because the media and political class deeply misunderstand its nature and influence. They frequently conflate the European Convention of Human Rights and the European Court of Human Rights. They persistently fail to consider its influence on illegal immigration. They rarely mention it at all. It’s easy to lose track of the amount of articles on illegal immigration, published by the likes of the BBC, which do not even include the word ‘court’ — let alone phrases such as ‘judicial review’ and ‘Home Office policy’. The reporting totally excludes the most important part of the story: ECHR. So the public remains ignorant, the discussion is controlled by ideologues, and the chaos behind the scenes intensifies. 

In some parts of the electorate, there is a simmering but cautious optimism of what Starmer’s Labour could achieve. Could they crack our farcical planning system? Could they repair our public services? There is no such room for even tentative confidence when it comes to the ECHR chaos — quite the contrary. Labour will, over the next five years, double down on this pernicious legal racket. The public can expect an acceleration of ludicrous cases against their institutions of state. More challenges against the Home Office because asylum seekers don’t get to pick where they want to live, more challenges against the Prison and Probation Service because rapists don’t get enough video calls, more injustice. And, yes, it will all be funded by the working man and woman. 

They revere it, like they revere all supranational lawmaking as a matter of principle

It is a nauseating prospect for anyone aware of it. But why is it such a certainty that Labour will make things even worse? Why does a Starmer government embolden those who make such vacuous ‘human rights’ claims? Firstly, because ECHR has the Prime Minister’s unwavering support. He is one of its most loyal and committed advocates. Writing in Counsel magazine in 2015, he said that ECHR “should not be viewed … as a burden, but promoted”. In so many words, we are to embrace this pillaging of our public purse and desecration of our values. Secondly, because the contemporary Labour Party believes in the supremacy not of our Parliament but of international law. Our new Foreign Secretary expounded in great detail, in his July 2023 speech to the Bingham Centre, his commitment to international law and set out how Labour intends to bind ministers by it. There are many such examples from big-hitting government frontbenchers. So we know from these two facts that the new Labour government will do approximately nothing to mitigate the slow rot of ECHR. They revere it, like they revere all supranational lawmaking as a matter of principle, and will therefore not even acknowledge its appalling consequences — let alone do the right thing and get Britain out of its bind. 

Less predictable on this issue are the Conservatives. Although they’ve previously demonstrated some unwillingness to face up to this issue despite its frustrating and often embarrassing consequences (think Rwanda flights being grounded), there’s also been some gnashing of the teeth from some pretty big names too. Suella Braverman is probably the most notable proponent for ending ECHR’s grip on the nation. 

How influential these ECHR skeptics will be is to be seen. There is one near certainty, however: the Tories are a party with a long history of splits — on everything from the House of Lords to the European Union — so we can be relatively sure they will divide themselves into two factions over this. It could become a defining issue in any leadership bids. It could be a big stick with which they beat Labour for years to come. Irrespective of this, whatever shape the Tory psychodrama takes, the Convention will be there — in the background — tightening its deathgrip on a brow-beaten Britain.