The Polish prime minister has obviously seen that those who question the modern relevance of the more-than-seven-decade-old European Convention of Human Rights are viewed favourably by voters for doing so, and wants some of that praise for himself.
But his suggestion that his government could withdraw from the convention appears, under the surface, to be totally empty.
The latest edition of The Sunday Times cites Donald Tusk as saying that if the signatories to the convention cannot agree on how to modernise it, it would be “quite reasonable to think about simply leaving it.”
Note that those are the paper’s words, not a direct quote. Euractiv also ‘quotes’ the PM as complaining to the Times about the “strict and increasingly broad interpretation” of the ECHR, even though these words do not appear in the article, so there’s something strange at play there.
Whatever Tusk actually said, one of his government spokesmen later stressed that he has no plans to withdraw from the ECHR:
The prime minister’s words did not refer to Poland, but were a response to a question posed by British journalists concerning the ongoing discussion in the UK.
On which, it is worth noting too that in the UK, Reform leader Nigel Farage said on Wednesday it is not enough to change the ECHR from within. He added that it is time to simply leave the convention altogether.
Without this, we will never take back control of our borders.
This is an update on Farage’s position on Britain’s membership of the convention, on which he previously said there should be a referendum.
The speed with which the Labour government this week managed to deport a foreign sex offender who was previously accidentally released from prison did, however, reveal that the ECHR is just one piece of the migration puzzle. What matters most is that voters elect politicians who actually want to control their borders, rather than those who just talk about it.
