Churchill would be no cheerleader for the modern ECHR
- Our continued membership of the ECHR is based on historical lies
- The idea that Britain would slide into despotism if we left the ECHR is for the birds
- We have arrived at a constitutional crossroads – let's choose parliamentary sovereignty
We have much to thank Winston Churchill for. Not only did he save us from fascist tyranny, but evoking his memory now is always guaranteed to incense left-wingers. One thing you might never have thought of crediting Churchill for, however, is laying the foundations for the creation, and our membership of, the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
Yet according to a version of history told by those who view our membership of the ECHR positively – including Keir Starmer and his Attorney General Richard Hermer – Churchill was a huge fan, and that means we should be too. The story goes that Churchill, embodying the nation’s trauma following the Second World War, advocated for a supranational ‘Charter of Human Rights’, to be enforced by a European court, to ensure that future atrocities do not go unpunished. After the ECHR was formed in 1950, Clement Attlee ratified it into British law.
Yet as a Centre for Policy Studies (CPS) report authored by Peter Lilley points out, this amounts to a creation myth. In actuality, concerns about the body’s potential for judicial overreach were voiced from the start.
As Dinnage says, there is no reason to think that we would slide into despotism if we left the ECHR. We might add to that and suggest that membership of the ECHR is one of the factors contributing to the slide.
2 comments:
There's a controversial view that religion poisons everything. Perhaps politics, over time, poisons everything too. The ECHR originally a good thing, poisoned by the drip, drip, drip of politics.
DJ - it's a useful way of looking at these things, however controversial. As if boundaries must be set and enforced, but an always feeble democracy is not able to maintain political boundaries.
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