Rishi can win back legions of voters by quitting ECHR
RISHI Sunak is right to prioritise our border security over membership of a foreign court. By quitting the European Convention on Human Rights, as he has threatened if his Rwanda plan is blocked, the Prime Minister could win back legions of disillusioned Tory voters from the rival Reform UK party.
It’s a battle worth winning if he has the stomach for it.
It was an anonymous judge in Strasbourg who intervened at the last minute to halt flights to Rwanda in 2022.
Taking back control of our sovereignty was at the heart of Brexit, and yet in this most vital matter of border security we have yet to regain control from foreign interference.
The ECHR is a totem for Leftleaning One Nation Tories for whom it represents a commitment to the international, globalist agenda that was rocked by Brexit. Mr Sunak may fear upsetting these Conservatives, as they were the ones backing him over Liz Truss for the party leadership.
But it is his apparent powerlessness to halt the small boats that is haemorrhaging support to Reform UK and will effectively terminate the Tory party as a functioning force.
BUT One Nation Tories have always put their party second to maintaining their moral purity and adherence to the international order. It was the One Nation Tories under David Cameron and Theresa May who flooded the party with candidates at odds with the grassroots.
Now with poll figures showing the Tories destined for electoral wipe out, the PM really has very little left to lose and should call the bluff of globalist Tories by taking us out of the ECHR. It’s not as though the party hasn’t defied it in the past.
Former PM David Cameron got a political boost by embracing common sense and refusing to enact the ECHR’s requirement for UK prison inmates to be given the vote. He argued quite rightly that convicted and jailed criminals had given up that right.
The fact is that the ECHR is increasingly becoming a platform for woke campaigns.
Yesterday for instance it ruled in favour of a Swiss couple seeking compensation from their government, saying it has failed to protect them from the consequences of climate change. Such a decision opens the gate to climate activists pushing governments harder and faster towards net zero whether it is in the overall interests of that nation or not.
In doing so, the ECHR has proved itself a supra-national legislator able to ignore national parliaments in favour of a hard-Left, anti-capitalist agenda. Former home office minister Sarah Dines says that “the European Court of Human Rights is now little more than an NGO serving the interests of unelected and unaccountable NGOs”.
She identifies at least 22 of the 100 Strasbourg judges as being former employees and activists for seven non-governmental human rights organisations.
This is the progressive globalist elite that routinely ignores national sentiments to pursue their own ideals more akin to student politics than the real world.
The ECHR was set up in 1950 to protect the human rights of oppressed minorities in the wake of the appalling crimes of the Second World War.
WE ARE now in a different world where the majority of socalled refugees are in fact economic migrants and national citizens across the EU are rightly concerned about high levels of migration, especially when they are changing the cultural make-up of their nations.
Citizens in democracies should never feel powerless in the face of international cabals like the ECHR.
It is up to our elected leaders to take them on and return some common sense to national decisions.
Good, popular leaders take on battles they can win. Margaret Thatcher successfully challenged the power of trade unions and transformed our economy. Rishi Sunak needs to do the same thing over illegal migration and break away from the ECHR.
By taking on this woke mafia, he will show his courage to ignore the handful of globalist colleagues in his own party and show voters the nation is able to shape its own future.
That is what electors want to see and, if the PM picks this fight, he might well win back some of the support he has lost.
‘The ECHR ignores parliaments in favour of a hard-Left agenda’