Leaving the ECHR will be the new Brexit
The Tories love a civil war. For all that our four leadership candidates may pay fealty this week to the noble cause of Party Unity, we Conservatives have a long and noble tradition of falling out with each other.
This year’s party conference has shown that we are gearing up for yet another battle.
Leaving aside the challenges created by our penchant for regicide, there are plenty of great issues over which we have fought. The Corn Laws. Tariff Reform. Wets and Dries. And, most recently, Brexit. Since getting that done was one of the few promises Boris Johnson made in 2019 that he kept, it has faded. The average Europhile is bruised but quiescent, ready to say “I told you so” at poor trade figures.
Yet the Eurosceptic flame still burns. Robert Jenrick and Tom Tugendhat – the two ex-Remainers in the final four – aim to out-compete each other in the depth of their conversions on the route to the party leadership. A healthy majority of Tory members voted to Leave. Without proving their credibility on Brexit, neither of the pair can hope to win their hearts. If it worked for Liz Truss, why not them?
But the Conservative Party is gearing up for a new and separate battle over Brussels. It has many similarities with the first in terms of personalities and slogans. But this time, the target is not the EU, but the ECHR. Across conference events, in the bars and corridors, members either point to the court either as a meddling foreign imposition, or a sign our party has become institutionally anti-institution.
Our membership of the court long predates our entry into the EU. With 47 members, it is also far larger, stretching from Iceland to Turkey. For Tories of a certain vintage, mentions of the court conjure up lone, manly tears at the thought of Winston Churchill laying down to the shattered states of post-war Europe the basic standards of English justice. Post Tony Blair, it is a cornerstone of our legal system.
Yet plenty of Conservatives blame the court for our inability to deport rapists, murderers, terrorists, and those, more generally, who have arrived here illegally. The issue is the same as in Brexit 1.0: Brussels busybodies interfering in our domestic politics. Take Back Control, in a nutshell.
Jenrick has committed to leaving it. Tom Tugendhat has suggested reform, the traditional route of the milquetoast Eurosceptic. Kemi Badenoch and James Cleverly have set themselves against it. Despite being former Brexiteers, the pair believe the ECHR is not alone to blame for our migration woes, just as Remainers once suggested our sluggish economy and sclerotic economy were not all the EU’s fault.
Whomever wins the leadership election, the party will not avoid a fight. If Jenrick wins, he will commit the party to leaving; if he loses, his supporters are unlikely to shut up about their chosen route to reducing illegal immigration. The Rwanda scheme casts a long shadow.
Nonetheless, this is a debate the Tories must have. ConservativeHome polls suggest seven in ten party members back leaving. The number of irregular crossings into Europe have tripled since 2010, with over 23,000 having made their way to the UK via small boats in 2024. With Labour already in a muddle, the debate over dealing with our worst Channel arrivals crisis since the Normans won’t go away.
Even if the mood in Birmingham is surprisingly upbeat, the work of opposition will involve a lot of hard bargaining. The first Tory civil war over Europe felled leader after leader. Whatever the hopes of the final four for uniting the party around them, don’t rule out the second claiming a similar scalp.