Britain should leave the European Convention on Human Rights no matter what, says Theresa May

Britain should leave the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) even if it stays in the European Union, Home Secretary Theresa May has said.

In a dramatic intervention which has confounded and undermined many of her colleagues, including Prime Minister David Cameron, May said that the ECHR has impeded her attempts to deport extremists, citing the cases of Abu Hamza and Abu Qatada as examples. The move has been seen by many as an attempt to woo the many Eurosceptics in the Conservative Party, as May vies for position to succeed Cameron as leader. As the Guardian reports, lawyer and Tory MP Dominic Grieve, the former attorney general and a consistent defender of the ECHR inside the Conservative Party, said that he was disappointed with May’s pronouncement.

The shadow justice secretary, Labour’s Charles Falconer, went further, saying: “[May is talking about] sacrificing Britain’s 68-year-old commitment to human rights for her own miserable Tory leadership ambitions. That is so ignorant, so illiberal, so misguided. Ignorant because you have to be a member of the ECHR to be a member of the European Union. The European Union itself agrees to abide by the ECHR. Illiberal because … there has to be a source external to a government determining what human rights are.”

May said: “The ECHR can bind the hands of parliament, adds nothing to our prosperity, makes us less secure by preventing the deportation of dangerous foreign nationals – and does nothing to change the attitudes of governments like Russia’s when it comes to human rights. So regardless of the EU referendum, my view is this: if we want to reform human rights laws in this country, it isn’t the European Union we should leave, but the ECHR and the jurisdiction of its court.”