British ‘Conservatives’ Still Won’t Commit to Leaving the ECHR

Even out of government, the Tories continue to prove that they don’t have what it takes to get a grip on illegal migration.

Leading Conservative James Cleverly, appointed to the party’s shadow cabinet in a reshuffle on Tuesday, has refused to endorse what the papers describe as leader Kemi Badenoch’s “position” on leaving the European Convention on Human Rights, even though it’s blatantly obvious that staying in makes effective border control almost impossible.

Indeed, Britain’s continued membership of the Strasbourg-based convention means deportations of foreign criminals are continually blocked for the most ridiculous of ‘reasons,’ and that migrants coming to the UK can bring (in one case, 22) ‘family members’ with no blood or legal connection with them.

Cleverly was asked repeatedly about his view on Wednesday, but would not be drawn on the issue. The Centre for Migration Control think tank said in response that “any politician who is not committed to leaving the ECHR is either oblivious to the migration crisis, or does not care about it.”

This weakness from James Cleverly has no place in frontline politics.

Not that Badenoch’s view is firm, either. The Tory leader—that is, the nominal leader of British conservatives (!)—said in June she was “increasingly of the view that we will need to leave” the treaty. But just a matter of months earlier, she suggested that opposition to Britain’s membership of the ECHR was the “biggest weakness” of a political rival because “that will divide our party.”

Some in the party are speaking up about the need to leave the convention, though they—especially popular figures Suella Braverman and Robert Jenrick—have also shown themselves to be far more (perhaps even solely) interested in producing rhetoric than substance, as is so often the case with the Conservatives.