"We must adopt a realistic view of so-called international law. The first step is to free ourselves from a body that has lost its way"
Telegraph: 15th March 2025: Former Attorney General, Sir Michael Ellis, joins PopCon and a growing number of others calling for Britain to quit the ECHR (as a necessary - but not only step - to solving Britain's immigration crisis).
"International law is not all it’s cracked up to be. Most democracies around the world will readily resile from their international “obligations” if it suits them. They recognise, unlike the British government, that international law is secondary to national interests.
...This is why Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, deeply fearful of Russian aggression, has recently said that Poland will withdraw from the 1997 Ottawa Convention which bans the use of anti-personnel mines. Poland will become the first EU state to withdraw from this treaty.... Lithuania has also said in the last few days that it will leave a 2008 convention which bans cluster munitions...
...When the future of their country is at stake, leaders quickly wake up to the irrelevance of international law.
It’s not just withdrawals from international law obligations that highlight its irrelevance. It’s the actual misuse of international law which has discredited and devalued it...
And that brings us to the European Court of Human Rights. It’s time for the UK to take our leave...
...Withdrawal from the ECHR will not be a panacea to the UK’s problems with international law. Our lexocracy (my word for the rule of lawyers, rather than the rule of law) also includes our own Human Rights Act, as well as a rather out of control concept of judicial review and other problems which have allowed our judges to become a law unto themselves. These things will all have to be addressed – but withdrawing from the ECHR would be an important first step..."