There's always someone crazier for whom leaving the ECHR isn't the answer
Tuesday, 15 Oct 2024, 09:17
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Edited by Leon Spence, Tuesday, 15 Oct 2024, 09:19
As a Conservative party member, Association Chairman and member of the National Conservative Convention I've always believed there is nothing more important than the rule of law. If, as an increasingly global society, we don't have a set of rules to abide by, then what do we become?
There has been a tendency amongst some in Britain in recent years to distance ourselves away from the supranational bodies that for the most part sprang out of the global wars of the first half of the twentieth century, because we don't like some of the decisions they arrive at. "We want our sovereignty." "We want to take back control from these shady, non accountable organisations."
For some that step away from international cooperation came with Brexit, for others the mad conspiracy theories about both our path into and out of the pandemic. But the truth is that each step away from international working and towards national insularity will never be enough for the subscribers of isolationism.
With the Conservative leadership election underway we hear - from one of the candidates at least - that the answer to 'stopping the small boats' is leaving the European Convention on Human Rights.
Of course it won't be. Instead we will take another step away from the international norm - and internationally agreed human rights - to being at risk of becoming a petty outlier.
And when leaving the ECHR doesn't happen, what then?
There will always be someone a little more extreme, and with an audience of similarly desperate like-minded folk, to say this time its the Commonwealth, the IMF, NATO, or maybe the United Nations.
For the most part, for the better part of a century, supranational bodies have been drivers of peace, security and economic growth around the world.
With cooperation comes a degree of giving up ones sovereignty, it's the price that we pay for the benefits we receive.
And, no matter what a Tory leadership contender says to you, we will never have sovereignty unless we leave every one of those supranational bodies because there will always be decisions we don't like, and leaving will always be the answer given to those out of step with the complexities of reality.
We've seen the difficulties that leaving just one of those bodies has brought, why would we think leaving more would make things better?
Instead it will leave Britain alone and isolated, away from international partnership.
Thank heavens, at least when it comes to the Government's law officers we appear to have a grown up in charge.
There's always someone crazier for whom leaving the ECHR isn't the answer
As a Conservative party member, Association Chairman and member of the National Conservative Convention I've always believed there is nothing more important than the rule of law. If, as an increasingly global society, we don't have a set of rules to abide by, then what do we become?
It's for that reason I warmly welcome the words of Labour's new attorney-general, Lord Hermer KC who has called on the new government to take "immediate steps to restore the UK's reputation by abiding by international conventions, courts and championing international institutions."
There has been a tendency amongst some in Britain in recent years to distance ourselves away from the supranational bodies that for the most part sprang out of the global wars of the first half of the twentieth century, because we don't like some of the decisions they arrive at. "We want our sovereignty." "We want to take back control from these shady, non accountable organisations."
For some that step away from international cooperation came with Brexit, for others the mad conspiracy theories about both our path into and out of the pandemic. But the truth is that each step away from international working and towards national insularity will never be enough for the subscribers of isolationism.
With the Conservative leadership election underway we hear - from one of the candidates at least - that the answer to 'stopping the small boats' is leaving the European Convention on Human Rights.
Of course it won't be. Instead we will take another step away from the international norm - and internationally agreed human rights - to being at risk of becoming a petty outlier.
And when leaving the ECHR doesn't happen, what then?
There will always be someone a little more extreme, and with an audience of similarly desperate like-minded folk, to say this time its the Commonwealth, the IMF, NATO, or maybe the United Nations.
For the most part, for the better part of a century, supranational bodies have been drivers of peace, security and economic growth around the world.
With cooperation comes a degree of giving up ones sovereignty, it's the price that we pay for the benefits we receive.
And, no matter what a Tory leadership contender says to you, we will never have sovereignty unless we leave every one of those supranational bodies because there will always be decisions we don't like, and leaving will always be the answer given to those out of step with the complexities of reality.
We've seen the difficulties that leaving just one of those bodies has brought, why would we think leaving more would make things better?
Instead it will leave Britain alone and isolated, away from international partnership.
Thank heavens, at least when it comes to the Government's law officers we appear to have a grown up in charge.