Cameron’s coming battle over the ECHR

The coming release of Abu Qatada on bail is going to put bellows under the whole debate about the European Court of Human Rights. In his recent speech to the Council of Europe, David Cameron rightly protested about a situation with terror suspects in which ‘you cannot try them, you cannot detain them and you cannot deport them.’ We will now find out how quickly Cameron is prepared to act on this issue.

If Cameron wants to makes changes to the Courts and the Convention, then he is going to have to get agreement from every member of the Council of Europe. There’s no guarantee that he’ll be able to get this and it will take an awfully long time. But leaving the jurisdiction of the court, which is what most Tory MPs I’ve spoken to about this issue would like the government to do, would be strongly opposed by the Liberal Democrats and the attorney general Dominic Grieve.