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Britain’s lawmakers are obsessing about European courts … againFeeling the heat on immigration, now even center-left Labour MPs want to close “legal loopholes” relating to the European Convention on Human Rights.April 10, 2025 4:00 am CET
By Annabelle Dickson and Dan Bloom
LONDON — Bashing European laws used to be a favored pastime of right-wing British lawmakers. It’s now going mainstream.
Months after inheriting responsibility for Britain’s borders, the U.K.’s center-left Prime Minister Keir Starmer is taking aim at the application of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), which he says is being wrongly used to circumvent Britain’s own immigration rules.
Starmer, a former human rights lawyer, attracted fire from Britain’s top judge earlier this year after publicly criticizing a court decision allowing a Palestinian family to come to the U.K. under a Ukrainian resettlement scheme — in part down to an ECHR provision called Article 8 that protects a right to a family life.
“Let me be clear: It should be parliament that makes the rules on immigration. It should be the government who make the policy,” Starmer told MPs, as he pledged to close the “legal loophole” which had led to that ruling.
Starmer’s Home Secretary Yvette Cooper announced she is reviewing how aspects of that European treaty are being used by foreign criminals and asylum-seekers to argue for a right to stay in the U.K.
Tough talk on Britain’s borders is winning support from some Labour MPs feeling the heat from voters over the number of undocumented migrants arriving on Britain’s shores.
Nigel Farage’s right-wing Reform UK party, which talks tough on immigration and wants Britain to leave the ECHR, came second in the seats of 89 Labour MPs at last year’s election, including Cooper’s own West Yorkshire seat.
“I think there’s deep frustration at the numbers that we’ve inherited, which are, frankly, scandalous,” said Jonathan Brash, Labour MP for Hartlepool, a seat where Reform pose an electoral threat.
“My constituents are very, very clear that they expect something to be done about this broken system. And so all I’ve had in response to [Cooper’s ECHR review announcement] has been positivity,” Brash added.
Another Labour MP, Jake Richards, agreed, posting on X : “This government was elected on a promise to get a grip on immigration. We should not apologise for this. And if that means changing the operation of Article 8 of the ECHR then so be it.”
“As the prime minister has said, we are looking at the application of Article 8 of the ECHR to ensure our immigration rules work as intended,” the Home Office said in a statement to POLITICO. “We will set out plans to reform the immigration system in our upcoming White Paper, which will be published in due course.”
Déjà vuThe problem for Starmer is politicians have tried — and failed — to address politically unpalatable rulings made thanks to the European convention before. Starmer has long pitched himself as the antithesis of those Conservative politicians routinely suggesting Britain ignore ECHR rulings.
Rajiv Shah, a former Downing Street aide who advised former Conservative prime ministers Rishi Sunak and Boris Johnson on ECHR policy, said Cooper ran the risk of “sounding like a poor Tory tribute act” in announcing the review, warning she was announcing “tough-sounding measures that won’t deliver tangible results.”
The 2014 Immigration Act set the domestic rules on Article 8 and deportations to be “as tough as possible within the confines of the ECHR,” he said, warning that “going significantly further would only be possible by breaching the ECHR, which the government is not willing to do.”
Attorney General Richard Hermer told the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe in January that the U.K. government would “never withdraw” from the European Convention on Human Rights or “refuse to comply with judgments of the court, or requests for interim measures given in respect of the United Kingdom.”
Cooper also stressed in a BBC interview that the government continues “to support international law.”
The ECHR, which was established in the 1950s, sets out the rights and freedoms people are entitled to in 46 signatory countries. It is separate to the European Union, and the U.K. remained part of it after Brexit.
Action needed If former Tory strategists’ predictions are borne out and the review does not yield results, a minority of Starmer’s party could start calling for more radical action.
Another Labour MP representing a northern England constituency privately admitted they would not be “closed to the question” of whether Britain should stay in the ECHR — though they stressed they’d be less likely to support full withdrawal than derogating from the law where there are “abuses of the spirit of what those provisions are meant to be for.”
The Labour Party had to work hard to show it no longer has an “open border” brand, said the MP, who granted anonymity to speak freely about a sensitive issue.
That view is far from universal in Labour circles.
On his left flank, Starmer would likely face opposition if he were to beef up his tough on immigration rhetoric further. Labour members, including MPs, signed a statement in February criticizing the government for copying the “performative cruelty” of the Tories in its asylum policy after the Home Office promoted its growing deportation numbers, releasing footage of people being removed by plane.
And Hermer, the attorney general, gave a full-throated defense of the convention to a parliamentary committee earlier this month, describing Britain’s involvement in its creation as a “point of national pride.”
But Labour MPs could well come under more political pressure if voters continue to perceive the convention as a block on ministers’ ability to act on immigration.
Conservative politicians, and people linked to Reform UK, have discussed the idea of setting up a single-issue campaign group to leave the ECHR, according to a Conservative strategist who was also granted anonymity to speak freely.
Proponents are in search of funding and backers to create such a group — which would likely be led by a board in the model of campaign groups in the run-up to the 2016 EU referendum — to get the issue dominating conversations in Westminster again.
But pro-Brexit groups were riddled by infighting, and there would be the danger that this would be no different. “Can you imagine what a bear pit it’d be? All these people briefing against each other,” said the strategist.
Sunak’s short-lived premiership was overshadowed by internal squabbling about Britain’s membership in the ECHR after its first deportation flight of asylum-seekers to Rwanda was abandoned after a last-minute intervention from the European Court of Human Rights, which rules on whether countries are complying with their treaty obligations.
The anonymous northern MP has some sympathy with Sunak’s plight.
“It’s a difficult problem for the government to solve, and I think that’s probably why the last government got themselves into so much of a tangle on it,” the MP said.
For that MP, and many other colleagues, Labour’s success depends on Starmer, and his ministers, succeeding where Sunak failed.
CORRECTION: This article was updated to correct a reference to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.
https://www.politico.eu/article/britain-lawmaker-obsess-european-court-again/