
Badenoch to launch review examining whether UK should pull out of ECHR
The commission will examine whether Britain should pull out of a series of agreements, it is understood.
It comes ahead of a speech Conservative leader Mrs Badenoch is expected to make on Friday.
The ECHR was a dividing issue in last year's Conservative leadership election, with Mrs Badenoch's rival Robert Jenrick championing the idea that Britain should pull out.
Mrs Badenoch has stopped short of calling for the UK to leave, but in February she suggested that the UK would 'probably' have to withdraw from the convention if it stops the country from doing 'what is right'.
She told a London event: 'When it comes to the ECHR, I have always been very clear that the ECHR should not stop us from doing what is right for the people of this country and what is right in our national interest.
'And if it continues to do so, at some point we will probably have to leave.
'What I have not agreed with is deciding that we should leave without having a plan for what that looks like and how to do so in a way that makes sense.'
The Convention's Article 8 – a right to a family life – has been notably used by foreign criminals to avoid deportation from the UK.
The Government's immigration white paper released last month promised legislation to 'strengthen the public interest test to make it clear that Parliament needs to be able to control our country's borders and take back control over who comes to, and stays in the UK'.
Sir Keir Starmer said at the time that the 'the right balance' needed to be made between individual rights and 'the national interest'.

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


Glasgow Times
an hour ago
- Glasgow Times
Kemi Badenoch refuses to kick Liz Truss out of Conservative Party
The Tory leader suggested such a move would be 'neither here nor there' for voters' perception of the party. In a speech on Thursday, shadow chancellor Sir Mel Stride sought to distance the Conservatives from Ms Truss's mini-budget, saying the party needed to show 'contrition' to restore its economic credibility. In a furious response, Ms Truss accused Sir Mel of having 'kowtowed to the failed Treasury orthodoxy' and being 'set on undermining my plan for growth'. Asked by the BBC on Friday whether she would consider throwing former prime minister Ms Truss out of the Conservatives in a symbolic break with her short-lived, turbulent time in No 10, Mrs Badenoch replied: 'Is she still in the party?' Ms Truss, the former Conservative MP for South West Norfolk, is understood to be a Tory party member still. Speaking to the BBC, Mrs Badenoch said: 'What is really important is what Mel was saying yesterday. What he was saying was that the mini-budget did not balance. It wasn't tax cuts, it was the … £150 billion of spending increases on energy bills that did not make sense.' Pressed whether she believed the mini-budget had damaged the Conservative brand, Mrs Badenoch said: 'Well, look at what happened, people didn't understand why we had done that, and so our reputation for economic competence was damaged.' Tory leader Kemi Badenoch said the party needed to 'focus on how we're going to get this country back on track' (Stefan Rousseau/PA) When asked again why she would not consider kicking Ms Truss out of the party, the Tory leader said: 'It is not about any particular individual. I don't want to be commenting on previous prime ministers. 'They've had their time. What am I going to do now? Removing people from a political party is neither here nor there in terms of what it is your viewers want to see.' After insisting Ms Truss was not in Parliament anymore, Mrs Badenoch said her party needed to 'focus on how we're going to get this country back on track'. 'What we have right now is a Labour Government, it's Keir Starmer. We need to stop talking about several prime ministers ago and talk about the Prime Minister we've got now and what he's doing to the country,' the Tory leader said. Ms Truss this week appeared in a video to promote the Irish whiskey brand of bare-knuckle fighter Dougie Joyce, who was once jailed for attacking a 78-year-old man in a pub in 2022.

South Wales Argus
an hour ago
- South Wales Argus
Kemi Badenoch refuses to kick Liz Truss out of Conservative Party
The Tory leader suggested such a move would be 'neither here nor there' for voters' perception of the party. In a speech on Thursday, shadow chancellor Sir Mel Stride sought to distance the Conservatives from Ms Truss's mini-budget, saying the party needed to show 'contrition' to restore its economic credibility. In a furious response, Ms Truss accused Sir Mel of having 'kowtowed to the failed Treasury orthodoxy' and being 'set on undermining my plan for growth'. Asked by the BBC on Friday whether she would consider throwing former prime minister Ms Truss out of the Conservatives in a symbolic break with her short-lived, turbulent time in No 10, Mrs Badenoch replied: 'Is she still in the party?' Ms Truss, the former Conservative MP for South West Norfolk, is understood to be a Tory party member still. Speaking to the BBC, Mrs Badenoch said: 'What is really important is what Mel was saying yesterday. What he was saying was that the mini-budget did not balance. It wasn't tax cuts, it was the … £150 billion of spending increases on energy bills that did not make sense.' Pressed whether she believed the mini-budget had damaged the Conservative brand, Mrs Badenoch said: 'Well, look at what happened, people didn't understand why we had done that, and so our reputation for economic competence was damaged.' Tory leader Kemi Badenoch said the party needed to 'focus on how we're going to get this country back on track' (Stefan Rousseau/PA) When asked again why she would not consider kicking Ms Truss out of the party, the Tory leader said: 'It is not about any particular individual. I don't want to be commenting on previous prime ministers. 'They've had their time. What am I going to do now? Removing people from a political party is neither here nor there in terms of what it is your viewers want to see.' After insisting Ms Truss was not in Parliament anymore, Mrs Badenoch said her party needed to 'focus on how we're going to get this country back on track'. 'What we have right now is a Labour Government, it's Keir Starmer. We need to stop talking about several prime ministers ago and talk about the Prime Minister we've got now and what he's doing to the country,' the Tory leader said. Ms Truss this week appeared in a video to promote the Irish whiskey brand of bare-knuckle fighter Dougie Joyce, who was once jailed for attacking a 78-year-old man in a pub in 2022.


The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
Robert Jenrick is no kind of role model for Labour
Robert Jenrick isn't diagnosing disorder. He's manufacturing it (It's easy to dismiss Robert Jenrick's fare-dodging stunt. But he understands something Keir Starmer doesn't, 30 May). The issue isn't whether people are annoyed by fare-dodgers or spooked by barber shops that stay open late. It's why that resentment gets more political airtime than landlords hiking rents, billionaires dodging taxes, or private equity firms bleeding the NHS dry. What Jenrick is doing isn't tapping into some universal British frustration with rule-breaking. He's engaging in the oldest trick in the reactionary playbook. Inflate petty infractions into moral panics. Redirect public rage downward. Claim the mantle of common sense. It's the politics of distraction, dressed up as concern for order. When Freedland suggests Keir Starmer could learn from this, not the policies but the presentation, he endorses the very performance of power that makes people feel unheard. It's not that Starmer fails to appear tough enough on antisocial behaviour. It's that he fails to speak to the real antisocial behaviours that define life under late capitalism. Wage theft. Housing precarity. Digital surveillance. Austerity itself. Fare-dodging is often an act of desperation or defiance in a system designed to extract. 'Weird Turkish barber shops' is not a neutral observation. It is a dog-whistle wrapped in folksy suspicion. The real disorder is structural, not stylistic. Any politics that treats broken windows as more urgent than broken lives will only reinforce the rot. We don't need Labour to better mimic Tory talking points. We need courage. Courage to name the real villains. Courage to refuse the scapegoat circuit. Courage to believe the public can handle more than tabloid MarphenLondon Jonathan Freedland is correct when he says it is 'awkward to take lessons in politics from Robert Jenrick'. However, Jenrick glosses over his party's part in the causes and thus has no understanding of what brought us here. The society that my and my parents' generation knew had established, long-term employers, often with people working together on a large scale. We had mutuals, social societies, sports and social and working men's clubs. What we offer my children's generation is cellular working, the commodification of everything, self-absorption and social isolation. Margaret Thatcher started the decay of mutual support and shared interests, and it has worsened over the past 14 years, so it is no surprise that some see the expression of self‑interest in antisocial behaviour and low-level criminality. Andrew KyleEaling, London Jonathan Freedland suggests that Keir Starmer might copy the populist gestures of Robert Jenrick. But Starmer has already indulged in many of Freedland's 'nods to the right' with his gimmicky video showing the forcible deportation of asylum seekers, and then his Powellite 'island of strangers' speech. Better by far to 'nod to the left' by copying Bernie Sanders (Interview, 4 June), with his uncompromising opposition to all forms of bigotry while advocating traditional social-democratic politics of strong welfare and just redistribution. And nearer home, Starmer could listen to Gordon Brown (Opinion, 27 May) with his passionate commitment to ending child poverty, starting with the unhesitating end to the Tory two-child benefit Ben-Tovim University of Liverpool It is so distressing to find that I'm impressed by the actions of a politician whom I usually despise. Jonathan Freedland is correct, it's this kind of petty lawbreaking that infuriates those of us who think that as a society we all need to 'play by the rules'. But having Robert Jenrick (of all people) point this out? Talk about cognitive DownesBryneglwys, Denbighshire Have an opinion on anything you've read in the Guardian today? Please email us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our letters section.