The head of the Council of Europe has warned that Britain will be lumped in with the likes of Putin’s Russia and Lukashenko’s Belarus if it decides to leave the ECHR, which has been blamed for blocking deportations of criminals, sex offenders, and even terrorists from the UK.
Alain Berset, a Swiss Social Democrat who serves as the Secretary General of the Council of Europe (CoE), inserted himself in the debate over Britain’s continued membership in the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and its associated court, which was unaffected by Brexit as it is was treated by the government as a technically a separate institution from the EU, despite sharing the same flag, anthem, and campus in Strasbourg, France.
The ECHR has been a major focus of anti-mass migration campaigners like Reform UK leader Nigel Farage, who has vowed to withdraw Britain in order to fully regain sovereignty and finally fulfil the promises of Brexit. Despite failing to do so while in power, the so-called Conservative Party has followed Farage’s lead and now also vows to leave the ECHR if given power again.
However, Berset said that this would come with ramifications, telling POLITICO: “It is absolutely possible to leave the convention. Your decision… But what would it mean? It would create a new group of European countries not members of the Council of Europe and not implementing the Convention: Russia, Belarus and the U.K. That would be the consequence.”
While Belarus has never been a member of the ECHR, Russia was expelled from the group in 2022 following Moscow’s invasion of neighbouring Ukraine. Yet, is unclear what negative effects would be felt by Britain should the CoE group the UK alongside Russia other than bad PR.
The governing left-wing Labour Party of Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has so far rejected calls to leave the institution, arguing that it would be more beneficial to remain within the Convention and reform it from the inside.
Berset, whose organisation oversees the Court on Human Rights, said that multiple signatories of the Convention will be meeting for a summit in Chișinău on May 15 to discuss potential reforms to the framework; however, he admitted that it was unlikely that any agreement would be reached at the Moldova meeting.
“I really think that we are in a productive process. It’s not over now, it’s ongoing. But my impression will be, we will have a declaration,” he said.
The Convention has become a boon to leftist activist lawyers and judges, who often appeal to its articles to block the government from deporting criminal migrants, including murderers, rapists, and even terrorists. In December, an assessment from the government found that Britain’s membership in the ECHR has forced London to surveil around 170 migrants deemed dangerous, with around half being involved with terror or other extremist activities.
The ECHR has also played a more active role in Britain’s immigration policies, including issuing a last-minute order to prevent a deportation flight from taking off to send a handful of illegals to detention centres in the third-party country of Rwanda after the Boris Johnson government struck a deal with Kigali to establish asylum holding centres in the Central African nation.
The 2022 ruling sent the core plan developed by the former Tory government to disincentivise illegal migration into a tailspin, mired in legal wrangling for years, before it was ultimately scrapped by Starmer as one of his first acts as prime minister in 2024.
More recently, the left-wing government has used the Convention against the public during a case last year brought by the people of Epping, who demanded that the government shut down a migrant hotel after one of its residents, an illegal boat migrant from Ethiopia, had sexually assaulted a local 14-year-old girl. In the case against the local council, the government specifically cited the ECHR and its duties, as laid out therein, to provide for migrants, regardless of whether they entered the country illegally.
Brexit leader Nigel Farage has said that it will be necessary to leave the ECHR if Britain hopes to regain control over who is allowed in the country and who is not. In the service of removing illegals, the Reform chief has vowed to establish deportation centres capable of holding up to 24,000 people while they await removal. The party has promised not to locate such return hubs in areas of the country that voted for Restore, but rather in constituencies which voted for the open borders .
It comes as two people were arrested this week following a BBC investigation, which found that immigration advisors are often telling Muslim migrants to pretend to be homosexuals to increase their chances of receiving asylum from the left-wing British government.