Britain may have to leave the European Convention on Human Rights if it continues to act against the national interest, Kemi Badenoch has warned.
In her first major foreign policy speech, the Tory leader said it was time to take a ‘cold, hard look’ at many agreements the UK signed up to decades ago.
She said that at a time of global upheaval, with the end of the post-war peace secured by America, British sovereignty must take priority over international law and institutions.
‘When faced with regimes with no respect for the law, we need more realism,’ Mrs Badenoch said at the Policy Exchange think-tank’s Westminster HQ.
‘“International law” should not become a tool for NGOs [non-governmental organisations], and other critics, to advance an activist political agenda through international bodies or our courts.’
She highlighted how the ECHR had declared protection from climate change was a human right while both the International Court of Justice and a UN maritime tribunal told Britain to surrender the Chagos Islands to Mauritius.
‘If international bodies are taken over by activists, or by autocratic regimes like China or Russia, we must use our influence to stop them, and if that fails, we will need to disengage,’ she said.
‘We need to take a cold, hard look at the agreements we have signed and ask ourselves whether they really serve our national interest today.
Kemi Badenoch (pictured) gave her first major foreign policy speech and said British sovereignty must take priority over international law and institutions
In her first major foreign policy speech, the Tory leader said it was time to take a ‘cold, hard look’ at many agreements the UK signed up to decades ago
Kemi Badenoch has warned Britain may have to leave the European Convention on Human Rights if it continues to act against the national interest
‘We cannot win a war against an opponent willing to break all the rules while we insist on playing by the most gentle of Queensbury rules.’
She acknowledged that Britain had developed many international agreements reached after the Second World War but said some had since ‘mutated out of all recognition’.
Asked if she meant Britain should withdraw from the ECHR, she replied: ‘I have always been very clear that the ECHR should not stop us from doing what is right for the people of this country and what is right in our national interest.
‘And if it continues to do so, at some point we will probably have to leave.’ But she stressed the UK should not leave without a plan.
Mrs Badenoch insisted the US was still an ally, despite Donald Trump branding Ukraine’s leader Volodymyr Zelensky a ‘dictator’.
