by If only Boris Johnson could do something about the European Court of Human Rights, he wouldn’t need a referendum on it now. But when he was prime minister, he preferred to argue about it and suggest that he might consider withdrawing from the Convention or the Court that enforces it.
Rather than announcing the weakness of his government, his support for another referendum on “Europe” seems to be an idea that would do as much damage as possible to the Conservative Party.
We really shouldn’t give it the oxygen of publicity. Actually, the broadcasters should have an actor speak his words. At least the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg and Sky News’ Beth Rigby refused to interview him. In Kuenssberg’s case it is admitted that she accidentally sent her draft questions on WhatsApp, which were intended for her production team. In Rigby’s case, it was because Johnson refused to allow an interview to be recorded, in public, at a literary festival. Self-censorship of the strangest kind.
As a former prime minister, however, there is some interest in his views. He is held in high esteem by some members of the Conservative Party, including Nadine Dorries, who continues to claim, despite the facts, that he was brought down by a conspiracy rather than his own bad decisions.
However, the scales may be falling from their eyes when he informs them that it was Johnson who chose to use the freedom of Brexit of the United Kingdom to relax the rules and to triple clean immigration.
So let’s evaluate his plan on its merits. The European Court of Human Rights is a flawed institution. Centrifugal sensible prime ministers including Tony Blair and David Cameron were frustrated. In part, this was because he was doing his job, which is to protect the rights of a disaffected minority, including criminals and terrorists, who are bound to make life difficult for governments. But that was partly because their interpretation of human rights, such as the right to family life, has become too broad.
The Court banned a flight leaving for Rwanda in June 2022 – although the government could argue that it was not bound by the interim injunction. For all Johnson’s reputation for taking a bullish approach to international law, he and Priti Patel, the home secretary, admired him.
Now, however, he wants to take Dominic Cummings’ advice: “Do mental things that prove you’re not the establishment.” Asked The Daily Telegraph if he supported a referendum on CECD membership, he said: “I would. I think it has changed. It is much more adventurous from a legal point of view.”
Typically, in the next interview to promote his book, he backtracked, telling ITV’s Tom Bradby: “I’m not sure about it. yes be a referendum.” But the underlying message was clear: that the ECHR is unacceptable and that Britain should withdraw from it.
This just happens to be the policy of one of the four Tory leadership candidates – Robert Jenrick, who said the party will “die” if it doesn’t agree to leave. Johnson was angered by the dismissal when Bradby suggested that he appeared to be supporting Jenrick, after refusing to say which of the four he supported. “That’s a logical fallacy,” Johnson said.
Either way, it doesn’t help the Conservative Party much. Any suggestion that the party should still be “pushing on about Europe”, as Cameron put it, especially after apparently “doing Brexit”, seems out of touch with voters .
The ECHR may not be popular, but the idea that the Tory party must prioritize another referendum on Europe is fighting. Especially when, as Kemi Badenoch says, leaving the ECSC would not deal with “the root of the problem” of small boats.
Because of Johnson’s scattergun publicity my speed-reading colleagues say it’s a wonderfully obscure book, at the risk of revealing its weaknesses. He still dreams of making a comeback, but he seems very serious about preparing for it – just as he didn’t seem serious about pursuing power in the first place, except at the last minute, when his handlers hid him and he was saying as little as possible. in public.
Since leaving office, he has avoided a by-election in Uxbridge which he might have won after the privileges committee overthrew him, and has since stayed away from local Tory associations which could pave the way for her return. The reference he made to Cincinnatus in his speech spoke volumes: the Roman dictator returned to his quiet farming life and had to be asked to return to save the republic.
The numbers likely to beg Johnson to return to parliament to save the nation are dwindling. Their erroneous call for a referendum on the ECHR is likely to reduce those numbers even further.
