How the ECHR became the 'bogeyman' for right-wing Tories

By Jacob Paul (with Emily, Jon & Lewis)

Robert Jenrick says the European Court of Human Rights is stopping Britain from deporting foreign criminals, getting terrorists off our streets, and ending illegal migration. But will leaving the body actually address any of these issues?

Read time: 5 minutes

In brief…

• Right wing figures in the Conservative Party, such as leadership contender Robert Jenrick, have called for the UK to pull out of the European Convention of Human rights.
• They claim the court is blocking the UK from taking control of its own borders and that it meddles in British law too much.
• The News Agents say the Tory right is presenting this as a “simple solution” to all the UK’s problems they blame it for. But the reality is very different.

Tom Tugendhat says he's "extremely concerned" about Robert Jenrick's comments on the ECHR

What’s the story?

Swathes of the Conservative Party’s right wing have developed an obsession - making sure the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has no say in what happens in Britain.

It is a matter that has engulfed the Tory party at its conference in Birmingham this week.

“They make it sound like all our problems would just wonderfully vanish if we left this body”, Emily says.

From blocking sending asylum seekers to Rwanda to being the reason why the UK’s special forces are “killing rather than capturing terrorists”, the ECHR’s critics claim it is damaging for the country in a whole range of ways. 

But what actually is it? And what difference would it make if the UK left?

What is the ECHR?

The European Convention of Human Rights is an international treaty set up in 1950 by a number of countries including the UK.

It lays out the rights and freedoms people are entitled to in the 46 countries signed up, and is overseen by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.

Making matters difficult for those who want to pull out, the Convention was also written into the Good Friday Agreement, a peace deal which ended the Troubles by giving the Northern Irish government devolved powers.

Lewis points out: “If we're going to leave the ECHR, how on earth is that compatible with a Belfast Good Friday Agreement?

“It is underwritten as a key part of that text.”

So whoever decides to leave needs to have a plan to essentially redraw the Good Friday Agreement.

“Good luck with that”, Lewis says.

The UK remained a part of the ECHR after Brexit, as it is separate from the European Union.

But many of the same people who championed Brexit and criticise EU bureaucracy are calling for Britain to pull out of the ECHR too.

Why do right-wing Tories want to pull out?

Perhaps the first move which sparked Tory anger was the blocking of the first deportation flights to Rwanda after an injunction from the ECHR, which ruled on alleged breaches of the convention.

In 2023, Rishi Sunak first floated the idea of pulling out to facilitate a stronger crackdown on immigration, which he argued that the ECHR was blocking.

More recently, Tory leadership contender Robert Jenrick has made renewed calls to pull out.He wrote above his campaign video on X: “Do you want to deport foreign criminals, get terrorists off our streets, and end illegal migration?

“Then we must leave the ECHR.”

He also sparked controversy by saying: "Our special forces are killing, rather than capturing terrorists because our lawyers tell us if they are caught the European Court will set them free."

Jenrick was citing an article written by former defence secretary Ben Wallace.

Jenrick’s right-wing rival in the leadership race, Kemi Badenoch, has not ruled out pulling Britain out of the ECHR.

But she has said that leaving the convention could lead to a Brexit-style "legal wrangling" and opposition in the House of Lords.

She said: “If we need to leave the ECHR, then yes, let’s do that.

"But if we left the ECHR today, I don’t think we’d be deporting anyone any faster.”

What’s The News Agents’ take?

Emily says the idea of leaving the ECHR has become the “next kind of weird mantra that some on the Tory right have flung around in a sort of Brexit spirit”.

“As ever, with these sort of amorphous bodies, they become reduced down to bogeymen”, she adds.

But in reality, Emily argues that the body is not responsible for half of things Robert Jenrick claims it is.

She says: “In Jenrick’s mind, the ECHR is a thing that is responsible for high numbers of immigration. Not true. High numbers of illegal immigration. Not true.”

Emily also points out that the Supreme Court stopped the UK from sending asylum seekers to Rwanda before the ECHR did.

“There is nothing in the ECHR that determines our domestic immigration law,” she says.

And in part, that is why the ECHR is a “red herring” in the whole immigration debate, Emily adds.

Lewis says that this is all part of Jenrick’s “rebirth story”, in which he has moved from a moderate conservative to a “champion of the Conservative right”.

He says: “He claims to have worked within the Home Office, seen that this sort of apparatus, the infrastructure, the institutions of the Home office, just aren't fit for purpose.”

The ECHR, Jenrick has claimed, is one of the main reasons why Britain remains less sovereign than it should be, and is unable to deport people back to their home countries.

Lewis notes that while this is sometimes true, it is far from the whole story.

Jon asks whether we are seeing history repeat itself.

“Delete ECHR, put Brexit in. It's exactly the same argument.”

And that is, Jon says, that once Brexit got too complicated, the Tory right wing needed another “simple solution to all their ills”.

“This is the new one”, he adds.

Listen in full on The News Agents.

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