What now for human rights in the UK post-Brexit, asks Jon Robins
Theresa May, expected to shortly emerge as the “stop Boris” prime ministerial candidate in this post-referendum world, kept her head down during the Brexit campaign apart from one notable intervention.
While it was the economy, sovereignty and increasingly immigration that dominated debate over the last few weeks, the home secretary explained that she wanted to “remain” while getting the hell out of the European Convention on Human Rights.
The convention, she insisted, added “nothing to our prosperity, makes us less secure by preventing the deportation of dangerous foreign nationals—and does nothing to change the attitudes of governments like Russia’s when it comes to human rights”.
Laying out her stall, Theresa May went on to say: “This is Great Britain—the country of Magna Carta, parliamentary democracy and the fairest courts in the world—and we can protect human rights ourselves in a way that doesn’t jeopardise national security or bind the hands of Parliament.”
The minister once famously
