A candidate for the leadership of the U.K.’s Conservative Party has called for Britain to leave the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) in order to deport foreign criminals.
Robert Jenrick told a fringe event at the party’s conference in Birmingham on Monday that it is a “leave or die” issue for the Conservatives, insisting that if the center-right party cannot get a grip on uncontrolled mass immigration, it will cease to have a future as a viable electoral option for the British people.
Additionally, Jenrick has called for a democratically set annual cap on legal immigration to start tackling the recent years of record arrivals into Britain.
“A party of the center-right has to have an answer to these issues and if we don’t take a stand on fixing illegal migration, restoring sovereignty to our people and our Parliament, there isn’t a future for the Conservative Party,” Jenrick said.
Former Conservative leadership hopefuls like ex-home secretary Suella Braverman have previously proposed leaving the European Convention on Human Rights, a policy supported by grassroots conservatives in Britain but which failed to gain the support of a majority of the Conservative parliamentary party at the time.
However, following the party’s electoral annihilation in July’s general election, Jenrick insists that campaigning to leave the ECHR would no longer be a party-splitting issue.
“There’s a consensus now in the Conservative Party that the ECHR is not working in the interests of the British people.
“That is why almost everyone in the party believes we should, at the bare minimum, reform the ECHR. My argument is that this is not possible,” he told attendees.
“I have a plan, I have given this a great deal of thought, I’ve spoken to our counterparts throughout Europe and reform isn’t possible, it’s a fantasy. So we will have to leave.”
On social media, Jenrick’s campaign team posted a hard-hitting video in which he called for Britain to leave the human rights legislation in order to “deport foreign criminals, get terrorists off our streets, and end illegal migration.”
In the video, the leadership hopeful reeled off several high-profile foreign criminals involved in terrorist attacks, homicides, and the rapes of minors who remain in Britain following favorable judgments by the European Court of Human Rights.
“By leaving the ECHR, we will finally be able to secure our borders and implement the stronger version of the Rwanda policy that I advocated at the turn of the year where somebody is detained and then deported within days. That is the only way we can resolve this issue,” Jenrick said.
The Rwanda policy was a scheme proposed by the former Conservative government to outsource the processing of illegal migrants to the African nation. Despite hundreds of millions of pounds being spent on the scheme, not a single individual was successfully deported to the country before the proposal was scrapped by the new left-wing Labour government.
