Cracking down on the ECHR won’t save Sunak

Rishi Sunak’s unequivocal statement this week about sex and the Equality Act was a clever piece of electioneering. Subsequent reports suggesting that the Tories planned to harden their stance on the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), by contrast, had the air of a measure taken in sheer panic. Regrettably, this will be obvious to many potential voters already mulling the idea of quietly jumping ship to Reform UK.

The Prime Minister has failed badly in the presentation stakes. This matters. One of the chief attractions of Reform is that, for all their faults, they have never made any bones about their commitment to give notice to exit the ECHR and to give top priority to the connected topic of suppressing irregular migration. Faced with their sudden emergence into serious politics with Nigel Farage both leading the party and standing in Clacton, the proper response from CCHQ would have been a calm statement that the Tories had always had doubts about Strasbourg, were glad that Reform shared those doubts, and that they would be happy to make common cause on the matter.

What we actually got – a rushed promise of a harder line – gave the impression of a desperate response from a party which, rattled by Reform’s emergence, had just telephoned its head office to order it to rush out a policy that would sell in response.