Human rights appear to be a good thing. We are all in favour of human rights, surely. Co-operation with our European friends must be desirable, surely. The European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) was created in response to the horrors of WWII. The text was drafted by British lawyers. The UK joined in 1951, accepted the right of individual petition in 1966, and incorporated the Convention into UK domestic law in the Human Rights Act 1998 (HRA 1998). In a democratic society, legal restraints upon government must, in principle, be desirable. UK jurisprudence has been enriched by European judicial learning. The UK has won most of the cases brought against it.
The maintenance of human rights, the protection of the rights of the individual under the rule of law, is an entirely separate matter from membership or otherwise of
