The Tory split over the ECHR

Ken Clarke is speaking at a Daily Telegraph fringe event and he was quick to play a few of his favourite European games in response to Theresa May’s assault on the Human Rights Act and the European Court of Human Rights. Nick Watt reports that Clarke claims May did not brief of her examples of the HRA being abused. And he cast doubt on their veracity: according to Lucy Manning, Clarke jovially challenged May to substantiate her claim that a criminal was not deported on human rights grounds because they happened to own a cat.

This may seem like fun and games, but it reveals the tension over the HRA and the ECHR that exists within the Tory party, in addition to that which dominates the coalition. It will be interesting to see what the Attorney General Dominic Grieve, who is an advocate of the ECHR, has to say at a TRG fringe debate on this subject later today.