Former Conservative Adviser Charlie Rowley has brutally slammed Keir Starmer after two former Home Secretaries under the last Labour Government called for reform of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). While the Prime Minister has defended the ECHR, Nigel Farage, the leader of Reform UK, said that Britain would leave the convention if he won the next election. Under Farage’s plans, the Human Rights Act, which enshrines the convention, would be ditched and replaced with a British bill of rights. On GB News, they debated the “brewing revolt” within the Labour Government, with Charlie arguing that this is all to do with illegal immigration.
Charlie waded in: “It’s telling that two former Home Secretaries under the last Labour Government are now calling for reform of the ECHR. You saw Nigel Farage yesterday, when he announced his plans, so that the idea that over those decades, that actually our causes have been too lenient, we’ve tied ourselves. They’re playing to the fiddle to this new kind of new relationship in order to win back the voters.”
Jack Straw, who oversaw the incorporation of the ECHR into British law during Sir Tony Blair’s premiership, is the third figure from the New Labour era to call for reform. He warned that British courts were now “misused” by the ECHR.
Straw is following ex-Cabinet Minister Graham Stringer and former Home Secretary Lord Blunkett. Speaking in an interview with the Financial Times, Jack said: “There is no doubt at all that the convention — and crucially its interpretation — is now being used in ways which were never, ever intended when the instrument was drafted in the late forties and early fifties.”
He added: “The situation is more serious than the one I faced in the late 90s and early 00s. We had a high level of popular support, there was no Reform Party and the Tories were flat on their back”.
