Welcome to the ‘new Brexit’ wars

Meanwhile, Reform will continue to insist that leaving the ECHR is the only way to really get Brexit done, heaping pressure on the new Conservative leader. Just like Tory arguments about leaving the EU, this one can never die. 

For many years, despite Brexiteers in the Tory Party being a small minority, they never gave up. I fear the anti-ECHR mob are the same.

This time they have one candidate in the final two who is promising to leave. Next time they will try to engineer a situation in which both the final two are running on a promise to quit the ECHR. In the same way that Jenrick is threatening if elected to make all future Tory candidates back leaving the ECHR, or face not being selected at all. 

The noisy right wing pundits will swing behind it. Most of the right wing papers are already there. And of course the mainstream media will once again cheapen themselves with an “on the one hand, on the other hand” policy on reporting the issue, which will play right into the right wingers’ hands. It is a dangerous game.

So, in the interests of balance and common sense, let me set out clearly what leaving the ECHR means for the UK, for the EU and for Europe. 

The ECHR was established in postwar Europe by the UK and others to help prevent another Hitler or Mussolini stripping citizens of their rights and protections and ultimately creating a murderous fascist state. It was also a reaction and barrier to the spread of Stalinism in Eastern Europe.  The ECHR enshrines basic freedoms and rights that can never be removed by a government. 

The only countries in Europe that are not members are Belarus and Russia, which was thrown out after invading Ukraine. Greece left in the 1970s while under a military dictatorship, presumably so that they could torture and murder students more easily, and it rejoined the second democracy was restored. Those facts alone should tell you all you need to know.

The Vatican is an observer, Kosovo is trying to join, and so is the EU as a body. Apart from that, pretty much everyone else in Europe is a member and has no problem with membership. 

In short, if the UK left we would be leaving a huge group of liberal, democratic, law-abiding countries to join a small group of tin-pot dictators. All because the Tory Party now claims that it cannot deport whoever it wants and so “our borders are not secure”. 

If this sounds familiar, it is because this was basically the original argument for Brexit – that we don’t control our own country as long as we can be overruled by an international body we voluntarily joined. 

This was a lie, but it succeeded. If this ECHR lie succeeds too, it will lead to immense and possibly irreversible damage, and not just to the UK.

For a start, it would embolden the world’s dictators and neo-fascists, who would be able to say that the UK – the bastion of human rights, the mother of parliaments – has turned its back on human rights, on international oversight and the rule of law, and so they can do it too. What an example to set.

We would also be reversing decades of progress in encouraging democracy, freedom and human rights.

But that is just the damage that the UK would do to others. For the UK leaving the ECHR would mean tearing up any international agreements that incorporate the ECHR, with dire consequences for the UK, too. It would prevent any future such agreements – except with dictators like Vladimir Putin – because no one would ever trust us again, and we would be an international pariah.

Let’s start with the agreements the UK has signed that incorporate the ECHR. There are two main ones, the Good Friday Agreement (GFA), which ended The Troubles in Northern Ireland, and the UK’s Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA), the deal negotiated to take the UK out of the EU. 

The GFA is a pretty vague document – it had to be to appease both sides – but it is based on the UK and Ireland staying in the ECHR. Jenrick and his ilk make ridiculous claims about renegotiating it or keeping only Northern Ireland in the ECHR, or claiming that Dublin and the nationalist community will just have to like it or lump it. But the fact is this is an international treaty, underwritten by the EU and the USA – you cannot just rip out one of its main parts and carry on regardless. 

As Dr Barry Colfer, director of research at Ireland’s Institute of International and European Affairs, told me: “The GFA has real political ambiguity, but if there is a silver thread running through it, it is protection of human rights.”

Ireland would therefore fight to keep the GFA intact, and it is still in the EU. As we found out when negotiating Brexit, that means it has the unequivocal backing of all the other member states. Dublin may talk quietly, but it carries a very large stick. 

As Colfer says, “Ireland received the full, unwavering support of the other 26 EU members (over Brexit) and that wasn’t because Ireland was special, it is no more special than Latvia or Cyprus or France. We received the full unwavering support of our bloc because all of our interests were at risk. The same conditions would apply [with the GFA].”

Walking away from the ECHR would therefore mean threatening to destroy the GFA, endangering peace in Northern Ireland, and turning the whole of the EU and quite possibly Washington against us. All because of yet another far right Tory fantasy about “regaining control” or “sovereignty”.

Then there is the TCA, the deal that Boris Johnson and David Frost negotiated to get the UK out of the EU. As Catherine Barnard, professor of EU law at Cambridge University, explains, membership of the ECHR is not only essential for certain provisions of the TCA, it “runs through the whole thing like writing through a stick of rock”.

For a start, the ECHR is essential to things like legal cooperation and data sharing. If the UK is not part of the ECHR, you can forget any extraditions to the UK from the EU. Member state courts would block them on human rights grounds. 

Data sharing would also stop, and not just the sharing of information about criminals or terrorists; all data sharing would stop, because the EU has very strict rules on the sanctity of personal information and the ECHR is essential to those rules. Such data sharing is essential to the services sector and especially to online business and digital trade.

But the damage would go much further, because EU officials, quite rightly, didn’t trust the UK or Boris Johnson when they negotiated Brexit. Or as Barnard puts it: “They thought this was a possibility, which is why it (the ECHR) is in the TCA, It is hard-wired into the TCA.” 

The ECHR is even used to establish the whole basis for cooperation. The TCA says quite clearly that the parties “reaffirm their respect for the international human rights treaties to which they are parties”.

The TCA is therefore based on fundamental values shared by the EU and the UK. Leaving the ECHR would destroy those shared values, and the EU could quite easily use that as a reason to suspend or tear up the whole TCA – with just 30 days’ notice. 

We would be back to trading with the EU on World Trade Organization terms, and without a free trade deal. There would be even more checks at the borders, even more delays, even more added costs. 

The EU would charge tariffs on British imports – especially on agricultural products, which can be huge – and there would be no cooperation with the EU at all. This was such a disastrous prospect after the Brexit referendum that even Johnson pulled back from that particular cliff edge. 

On top of all that, any further negotiations with the EU or any member state would be dead in the water. The EU does not negotiate with countries that are not members of the ECHR, it does not cut trade deals with them or cooperate with them. The UK would be out on its own, a pariah state. Doubtless Belarus and Russia would welcome us with open arms, but that is about it. 

Leaving the ECHR is a disastrous idea, so stupid it is almost beyond comprehension. It would destroy rather than improve our international relationships, wreck our economy, destroy our agreements with the EU, tear up the Good Friday Agreement, encourage dictators everywhere and make the UK an isolated, friendless leper. 

But it is an idea that is not going away. Welcome to the “new Brexit” wars.