Boris is right: we need a referendum on the ECHR

Nobody should be surprised that Boris Johnson favours a referendum on leaving the ECHR, as his book now makes clear. Boris is an instinctive populist and maverick, who cordially despises the educated progressive establishment which argues for continued membership. He is also right. 

Intellectually, the case for remaining in the ECHR gets ever flimsier. When we ratified it in 1951, the convention was fairly uncontroversial. Against the background of the horrors of 1945, most of its provisions quite intentionally tracked the practices traditionally associated with the activities of Nazi and fascist regimes: mass murder, midnight searches of homes, overt torture, slave labour, forced displacement, wholesale suppression of dissent, and so on. Fair enough: no one thinks decent governments should be doing this kind of thing, whatever their voters’ views.

Now, the words remain, together with the implicit idea that human rights should be outside the ordinary political process.