Tonight brings two major developments in terms of Tory policy on the European Convention on Human Rights and the European Courts of Human Rights. The Mail on Sunday reports that Theresa May is close to announcing that under a post 2015, majority Tory government Britain would leave the Convention. All the articles of the Convention would be incorporated into a British Bill of Rights. But no one would be able to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights. This would end stand-offs such as the one over prisoner voting where the Strasbourg Court is telling parliament it has to enfranchise convicted inmates.
Under this system, the Supreme Court in this country really would be supreme. The expectation is that its judgments would better reflect this country’s legal traditions and it’d be a less activist court than the Strasbourg court.
One Tory says that so far, ‘we’ve been fixing the problem as far as we can in the constraints of coalition politics.
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