Tory leadership hopeful Robert Jenrick says he wants to give Brits a “leave our remain” choice over the UK’s membership of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
Echoing the choice at the Brexit vote, the former Home Office minister stated that it is time to “end this farce once and for all” with a definitive decision, saying the convention had made it “impossible to secure our borders”.
Legal challenges filed under the convention grounded flights scheduled under the last government’s failed Rwanda deportation scheme, which was later ruled unlawful by the UK’s Supreme Court and has now been scrapped by Labour.
MPs on the right of the party have increasingly blamed the convention for enabling failed asylum seekers to challenge their removal from the UK.
Jenrick, who topped the first two leadership ballots of Tory MPs, has put a pledge to leave the convention at the heart of his campaign to succeed Rishi Sunak as Conservative leader – a pledge which has not been echoed by his three rivals.
Posting on social media, he said leaving the convention was the only way to “deport foreign criminals, get terrorists off our streets, and end illegal migration”.
Responding to the video, European Movement vice president Dominic Grieve said: “This is one of the most astonishing videos I have ever seen posted by a Conservative MP, let alone a candidate for the leadership. Most of it is twaddle, a series of promises of change that leaving the ECHR will do nothing to take forward.”
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