By a Southampton resident.
Politicians and parties not keeping their promises is hardly ground-breaking. So why should Reform be any different? Well, probably because that’s exactly what they claim to be – different.
Not part of the political elite. The antidote to the Tories and Labour who, we are so often told, can’t be trusted. Nigel Farage is a “man of the people”. Supposedly, he “says it like it is”. But is he really saying it like it is when promising to leave the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR)?
Given the manner in which this claim is chucked around, one could be mistaken for thinking that leaving the ECHR is akin to cancelling a gym membership. A couple of clicks on a website, maybe a phone call, yes, yes yes, I do really want to cancel, no I don’t want to take an ECHR subscription holiday. Thanks, bye.
The reality is more complicated.
Firstly, and this is a biggie, no government has the prerogative to simply take the UK out of the ECHR. No matter how big a majority they have. No matter how ballsy they are. It has to go through Parliament. That means right through Parliament, the House of Lords (in which Reform have zero members to back it), the full works. It may even require a national referendum. With recent polling suggesting that, funnily enough, the vast majority of the public don’t want to set fire to the basic protections they have enjoyed for decades, that alone would scupper it.
Secondly, leaving the ECHR would mean re-negotiating the Brexit withdrawal agreement with the EU. Yes, THAT withdrawal agreement. The one that took about 3 years, crippled the day-to-day functioning of government and cost multiple prime ministers their credibility and eventually, their jobs. Anyone really up for that?
If all that isn’t enough of a mess, the ECHR is also intrinsic to the Good Friday Agreement. You know, the thing that brought an end to 30 years of conflict in Northern Ireland. So that will also need to be re-negotiated. No walk in the park there.
Finally, what about the British Bill of Rights that Reform has proposed to replace the ECHR. Well, the Tories tried to introduce a British Bill of Rights as recently as 2023, for the exact purposes of replacing parts of the Human Rights Act and it was roundly torn to pieces during the parliamentary process. With recommendations that it be scrapped, it never saw the light of day.
So what does all this mean?
Reform must know all of the above. None of this is secret. They would be well aware that attempting to leave the ECHR would be unimaginably time-consuming. Like Brexit, the legal wrangling could drag on for years.
But promising to leave the ECHR makes a great headline. Do they insult their supporters by assuming they are incapable of reading beyond it?
Farage has form for this too. The promises of more money for the NHS, cheaper goods and energy and controlled immigration that secured Brexit all turned out to be wildly inaccurate claims.
And yet here we are again.
Are Reform making promises they can’t keep because ultimately, they don’t need to keep them?
It’s about a quest for power. They just need enough gullible people to fall for the sales pitch to get them there.
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