12th June 2024
As each party manifesto is published online, and for my own easy amusement, I like to search the pdf for words like “enshrine” and “clear”.
And after that easy amusement, I look for more serious things.
Yesterday the Conservative manifesto was published.
(Many “clears” but disappointingly only one “enshrine”.)
What were the Conservatives were promising (threatening) this time for the Human Rights Act?
Doing something to this Act has been a mainstay of every Conservative general election manifesto for as long as I can remember.
But the search return was…
…0/0.
I am a clumsy typist and so I thought: a typo. Let me try again.
And it was still a nil return.
Something must be up with the search function, I thought.
And so I tried “ECHR”.
I even typed out in full the “European Convention on Human Rights” and the “European Court of Human Rights”.
Nil, nil.
How odd.
Could it be that the manifesto actually did not threaten the Act or the Convention?
Well.
A closer look revealed one fairly oblique mention:
Of course, the European Court of Human Rights is not meaningfully a foreign court: it has British judges, British lawyers can appear, British residents can petition the court or appeal cases there, and its caselaw can be relied on in our domestic courts. Foreign law usually is a matter of expert evidence, but Strasbourg case law is part of our own jurisprudence.
It is an international court, of which we are part, rather than a foreign court.
But that is by-the-by.
What is significant is not this sort-of commitment, but the lack of any other promises (or threats).
It is an astonishing, unexpected absence for a Conservative manifesto – perhaps the manifesto equivalent to leaving a D-Day commemoration early.
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Over on Twitter, Adam Wagner noticed the same:
Of course, it must be noted that government has recently been disapplying the Act on a statute-by-statute basis, rather than making any full frontal attack.
But even taking that point at its highest, one would still expect an explicit manifesto commitment just for the claps and cheers of political and media supporters.
And this is a governing party that needs all the claps and cheers it can get.
It is a remarkable omission.
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And one suspects it is an accidental omission, for the governing party has little to gain by leaving it out, and something to gain electorally (or at least hold on to) by leaving it in.
If so, the possible significance of the omission is that the Conservative leadership, having got bored with the pretence that the Act will ever be repealed or substantially amended, simply are not thinking about it any more.
Their minds have moved on to other “red meat” for their more illiberal supporters.
But what it also means is that, in the highly unlikely event of the Conservatives staying in government after 4 July 2024, there is no manifesto commitment they can rely on in forcing any changes to the Act through the House of Lords.
What that in turn means is that the Human Rights Act will now be safe for the lifetime of the next parliament, whatever happens at the general election.
And that itself is quite a thing.
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The word *enshrine* triggers the iconoclast in you, and in me by contagion.
Is it too much to hope that CCHQ have realised that they can’t leave the ECHR without getting agreement from all if the parties in NI and the Republic’s government to amend the Good Friday/Belfast agreement? It would be great if this could be pointed out regularly….
I fear that is too much to hope for.
We got a letter through the door from our local Conservative candidate, who would replace Dominic Raab. They are fending off a serious threat from the Liberal Democrat candidate who came close to winning last time.
They are not even pretending they are going to be in government. The messaging is that you want the Tories to be the main opposition. That’s how bad it is. Everyone knows this manifesto is a dead letter. They could have put anything in it. It makes me wonder whether some vague fear of pushing too far on Europe has somehow grown.
The absence of a manifesto commitment would justify the Lords rejecting an abolition Bill under the Salisbury/Addison Convention, but that only means that the Parliament Act procedure would be required, so the HRA is only protected for 12 months plus, not the full life of the next Parliament.
Good morning David.
Interesting isn’t it. I wrote about this yesterday, for the Spectator.
I’m not sure that I share your central conclusion that it’s a positive development. Rather, it seems to me that the focus has shifted from reforming ‘Labour’s Human Rights Act’ to leaving the ECHR. This troubles me.
Leaving the EU was a 20+ year project for some of John Major’s ‘bastards’. I think a new generation of right wing Conservatives have the ECHR firmly in their sights.
(Link to my full piece below).
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/why-rishi-sunak-cant-weaponise-the-echr/
Hi Alexander
Thank you for taking up my invitation on Threads for you to comment here and link to your piece.
There is force in your point. That said, and as Adam Wagner also notes, it is curious that the manifesto does not even spell out what “ECtHR” means – you know, I know and many reading this blog may know, but the average lay person will not. So even if you are right about the long-term project, and I think you are right, it does not explain the cursory mention made. I would have thought the disdain for ECHR would have been more expressly stated. So, on balance, I think there is both a long-term project but that it was a likely accidental omission.
I certainly agree that the language appears strange.
“foreign court, including the ECtHRs” is weird. What other court did they have in mind?
The manifesto also doesn’t make clear that leaving the jurisdiction of the European Court of Human Rights would mean leaving the ECHR – which is an odd omission.
Perhaps there was something else, which added context, that was deleted at the last moment.
It does have the feel of a rushed insertion in a heavily negotiated document.
“foreign court, including the ECtHRs” is weird. What other court did they have in mind?
– they probably also have the ICC etc in mind
This omission is indeed surprising.
May I suggest that there was something in the final draft but that when it was discussed there were such deep disagreements over what should be put in that there was no formula anyone could quickly identify which would not provoke public, on the record, disagreement?
So those involved decided to say nothing – probably with an agreement that everyone should say nothing.
This is what Balfour tried to achieve in 1903 over tariff reform when the leading antagonists on both sides left the cabinet. Initially he persuaded the Duke of Devonshire – the Liberal Unionist leader in the Lords – to remain in the cabinet but the Duke was so set upon by free traders who had left and thought him a traitor that he seized an opportunity to object to a paragraph in a speech by Balfour and resigned.
With over three weeks to go to polling day it will be interesting to see whether a vow of silence is kept…
They didn’t even mention it “for the avoidance of doubt”.
Without Pritti Vacant and Cruella snapping at their heels, they most likely forgot, and Jimmy Dimly was probably asleep at the time.