Despite voting to leave the European Union in 2016 — and finally leaving the bloc in 2020 — successive governments in London have decided to remain within the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and thus be bound by its Strasbourg-based court.
The institution, which is only technically distinct from the EU, has directly intervened on British immigration matters and is often appealed to by open borders activist lawyers when seeking to prevent the Home Office from removing illegal and criminal migrants from Britain.
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage, who was heckled by leftist lawmakers as he addressed the House of Commons on Wednesday, urged fellow MPs to fulfil the promises of Brexit and to reclaim national sovereignty and, indeed, to reclaim the democratic primacy of the Parliament.
“We know that we voted clearly by a massive margin for the British people to bring back the sovereignty … It’s the sovereignty of this very chamber and the people within it to bring power back to this very place. And that is what we voted for,” he said.
“I do not believe that it is right that we should, when it comes to controlling our borders, when it comes to who should be able legally to live, work and settle in this country, or indeed who should not be allowed to stay in our country, for this to be under the remit, firstly of judges in Strasbourg, who, by the way, are jurists, most of them not even legally qualified, and secondly, under the political control of judges in this country who now can make their own interpretation of what we’ve understood for many, many years to be British common law,” Farage noted.
“You don’t believe this country is good enough to make its own laws. Do you not believe a country that has Magna Carta and developed the principle of common law … you don’t believe we’re good enough to make these rules?” he concluded.
Mr Farage’s question was quickly answered, with 154 MPs voting against his 10-minute bill compared to 96 who voted in favour of the motion.
While the Conservative Party initially opposed leaving the Convention and refused to do so during multiple post-Brexit governments, earlier this month, party leader Kemi Badenoch followed Farage’s lead in declaring that Britain should exit the European institution. On Wednesday, 87 Conservative MPs joined Farage, while 64 members of the anti-Brexit Liberal Democrats and 63 Labour MPs voted against the bill, according to The Guardian.
The ECHR was critical in scuppering the Conservatives’ flagship policy to confront illegal migration in the English Channel, sensationally intervening at the last minute to prevent a migrant removal flight from taking off to Rwanda in the summer of 2022.
The Tories, under Boris Johnson, had negotiated with Kigali for Rwanda to house illegals in asylum centres rather than allowing them to remain in Britain while their claims are processed.
The government argued at the time that it would serve as a deterrent against future illegal immigration. However, the intervention by the Strasbourg court sent the plan into a spiral of legal challenges and the deal was scrapped after Labour came into power last year, before any illegals could be removed to the African nation.
In addition to directly interfering with British immigration policy, the ECHR has frequently been used in individual cases, often allowing some of the worst criminals to avoid deportation over dubious human rights concerns.
Indeed, earlier this year, a convicted Pakistani pedophile successfully appealed to the text of the Convention to avoid deportation, arguing that he might face retribution or criminal prosecution in his native country for “alcohol consumption”.
In another high-profile case, an illegal from Albania was granted permission to remain in Britain after a judge found that removal would impede on his “right to private and family life” under the ECHR, as his son did not like the chicken nuggets in Albania. Dozens of foreign terrorists have also successfully blocked the deportations.
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has said that while his government is willing to examine how the Convention is interpreted, he has opposed withdrawing from the agreement in principle. Senior cabinet members have even gone so far as to assert that should Britain leave the European Convention on Human Rights, it would put the UK on par with “autocratic” states such as Belarus and Russia.
This accusation was repeated on Wednesday by Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey, who said: “Russia under Vladimir Putin is the only country to have withdrawn from the European Convention on Human Rights. Now, maybe that’s what attracts [Farage] to it.”
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