‘Reform’s ‘British Bill of Rights’ puts your freedoms at risk, not just asylum seekers’

This Tuesday, Nigel Farage announced that in order to push through his proposed Illegal Migration (Mass Deportation) Bill, a Reform UK government would scrap the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) to be replaced by a British Bill of Rights.

Reform UK has claimed that within the span of one parliament, if they came to office, they would deport between 500,000 and 600,000 immigrants currently living in the UK and refuse to grant asylum to anyone arriving by crossing the Channel via small boat. In effect, this would mean that an Afghan woman fleeing Taliban persecution, a child escaping the war in Sudan, or a queer person facing the death penalty upon return to their country of origin would be denied life-saving refuge in the UK under a Farage-led government.

In legal terms, this policy would breach, at least, Articles 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, and 13 of the ECHR, which guarantee rights such as life, liberty, security, and freedom from torture, rendering Reform UK’s proposals incompatible with our existing legal framework.

Farage’s desire to scrap the ECHR is a cheap, disingenuous and inhumane answer to the real problems around immigration in this country, and the public see right through it. A recent YouGov poll found that 51% of British adults surveyed believed we should remain a member the ECHR, to just 27% who believed we should withdraw.

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In the dog whistle culture of modern political media, we have come to associate the ECHR almost exclusively with the subject of immigration and asylum, failing to fully comprehend the purpose it serves for all of us. While today’s political conversation, and the 27% against the ECHR, may fail to recognise this, the reason that we co-signed the ECHR in 1950 was to protect against regression to tyranny and oppression, in view of the recent horrors of the Second World War and Nazi Germany.

The ECHR exists to safeguard all of our rights, shielding us from being killed by the state, from torture, slavery, and from punishment without due process. It enshrines our rights to private and family life, our freedom of thought, expression, assembly and marriage, and outlaws discrimination. Leaving this Convention risks the rights of all of those who live in the UK.

As it stands, we know nothing about what Farage’s British Bill of Rights would contain, meaning by clapping along as he sermonises about withdrawing British membership of the ECHR, we are cheering in support of risking our own rights being stripped away with no clarity as to what would replace them. Farage’s unsubstantiated policy plans indicate his desire to win power at any cost, using divisive politics and language to get himself and his friends through the door at Number 10 at all of our peril.

A modern vision for Britain includes honouring our history by continuing to uphold unanimous and inimitable human rights, while recognising the need to adapt to modern problems. As this country’s parties of government debate how we can meaningfully address domestic issues associated with immigration, it is ever clearer that by undermining the rights that underpin our democracy and failing to offer alternatives, Farage’s party poses only risk and no remedy.

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