Scrap the ECHR with this One Easy Trick!

Public consensus needs to be manufactured to scrap the ECHR. Here's how.

The past few weeks should have extinguished any lingering doubts about the incompetence of the Metropolitan Police. Following an acid attack on a mother and child, suspect Abdul Ezedi embarked on a walking tour of central London, which included the Houses of Parliament and the MI6 headquarters, yet the Met have still been unable to find him. A few days ago, in a turn of events that seems suspiciously convenient, the Met announced that they believe Ezedi died after having ended up in the River Thames, meaning his body may never be found.

The farcical handling of the manhunt is not its most troubling element, however. It was soon revealed that the Afghan alkali attacker had been granted asylum on the third time of trying after he was convicted of sexual assault and exposure in 2018. That is to say, rather than deporting Ezedi after he was convicted of sex crimes, the British state gave him legal residency instead.

Ezedi’s was not a rare case that somehow managed to slip through the net of an otherwise functional system, but part of a broader pattern of highly dangerous foreign men, convicted of serious crimes, and allowed to stay in the United Kingdom despite their actions. Ministers are often quick to deflect blame when confronted with this phenomenon, arguing that the issue is beyond their control due to the constraints imposed upon them by the courts. Specifically, the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) has placed limitations on Britain’s ability to deport people, which has recently been brought to prominence following various court rulings blocking deportations to Rwanda on the basis of the ECHR.

The ECHR, which has since been incorporated into British law by the Human Rights Act (HRA), has long been a source of frustrations to British governments seeking to deport people they have deemed a danger to the public. Even New Labour, who introduced the HRA, expressed discontent after they had deportation orders blocked by the ECHR and HRA in infamous cases such as Abu Hamza and the Afghan hijackers.

Any government which is serious about deporting dangerous foreign criminals must therefore contend with the fact that the ECHR is an impenetrable barrier to doing so, and only by repealing it can the government ensure that its deportation orders for dangerous men will not be delayed or blocked indefinitely. Former government insider Dominic Cummings reached this conclusion long ago.

In 2020, there were tentative suggestions by Johnson’s administration to reform the HRA and potentially leave the ECHR, though these went nowhere following a full-throttled blob backlash. Liberal Democrat justice spokesperson Wera Hobhouse’s reaction was typical, as she warned: ‘Threatening to weaken people’s ability to challenge the government just because the courts sometimes rule against you is the act of dictators and despots’. After all, taking away human rights is following the playbook of regimes such as Putin’s Russia, Communist China, and, of course, Hitler! And who wants to be associated with Hitler?

The problem facing those wanting to withdraw from the ECHR and repeal the HRA is one of branding. Both prominently contain ‘human rights’ within their name, and in the public imagination the heuristic is simple: human rights – good; people trying to take away human rights – bad. The task is therefore to alter the common perception of the ECHR from the positive (human rights) to something negative. Here I propose one simple trick: make the ECHR associated with foreign rapists. That is, spread the idea that the reason foreign rapists cannot be deported from Britain is the ECHR, meaning that only by repealing the ECHR will foreign rapists to be taken off Britain’s streets for good.

Before Rory Stewart starts fulminating about how this is another example of Britain regressing into post-truth populist politics, it is important to note that there is a kernel of truth to this line; the ECHR has been the basis upon which deportations of foreign criminals, including some convicted of rape, have been blocked. For example, this recent case blocked the deportation of a psychotic convicted rapist back to Gambia on the basis of Article 3 of the ECHR. It is exactly cases like these that should be brought to the forefront of public attention, so that the immediate association when they hear ‘ECHR’ is no longer invaluable human rights, but psychotic Gambian rapists.

This framing also completely flips the burden of argument when the issue of repeal comes up; the discussion is no longer ‘why do you want to take away human rights?’, but ‘why do you want to stop us from deporting foreign rapists?’. Admittedly, such a strategy requires a dive into gutter politics – political opponents need to be accused of being soft on foreign rapists, and their concerns about ‘democratic backsliding’ or ‘dangerous precedents’ dismissed as a cynical mirage. But accusing your opponents of being proto-fascists or aspiring dictators is hardly the parable of gentlemanly politics either, so the adoption of such crude tactics is a recognition that the gutter is where this debate is being played out, rather than an unprecedented retreat from respectability. We are living in the era of Trump, not Obama; when they go low, we kick them!