Former Prime Minister David Cameron said the UK should leave the European Convention on Human Rights, associating himself with a hardline anti-immigration position that would once have been anathema to the UK’s mainstream political right.
The ex-premier, who has been advising Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch, told The Mishal Husain Show that he and his more right-wing successor “have some different outlooks” on policy. But he added that she was “absolutely right” in her position that Britain should pull out of the ECHR, a post-World War II framework promoting rights, freedoms and democracy.
“One of the reasons we’ve got such a problem with populism in our world is politicians of the center right and center left have not done enough to tackle illegal migration,” Cameron said. “We have to do whatever it takes to stop the small boats and to stop the illegal migration” that’s “stopping us having a sensible conversation about lots of things,” he said.
Cameron’s remarks highlight how the Tory-Labour duopoly that’s led UK governments for the past century are diverging in their approach to European relations. Prime Minister Andy Burnham is seeking closer ties with the bloc and has vowed to set out options for Britain that may extend to rejoining — something Cameron warned would be counterproductive. The Labour government has also pledged not to “dump” the ECHR.
Detractors of the ECHR, including in the Tory party, say the convention prevents Britain from deporting many people who have reached UK shores by irregular means. “The truth is we cannot have strong borders while in the ECHR,” Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp told the Tory Party conference last month.
The rapid surge in recent years of migrants crossing the English Channel from France and arriving on British shores has galvanized support for Nigel Farage’s anti-immigration Reform UK, which led national polls for more than a year until Burnham took office in July. While arrivals are down from a peak of more than 45,000 in 2022, numbers have still been enough to spark protests, such as in Portsmouth earlier this year.
“I would say to Kemi, whatever it takes, we’ve got to fix this problem,” said Cameron, who two and a half years ago was serving as foreign secretary in a government led by Rishi Sunak that wanted to reform, but not leave, the ECHR.
In Europe, just Russia, Belarus and the Vatican aren’t members of the convention, which was set up following a declaration in 1948 by leaders including Tory wartime premier Winston Churchill.
Cameron himself knows how hard it is to follow through on immigration pledges, even when it comes to those arriving in Britain by legal routes. He came to office in 2010 pledging to bring net immigration down to the “tens of thousands” per year, something he never came close to achieving during six years in charge.
In his bid to persuade Britons to vote to stay in the EU in the Brexit referendum in 2016, he negotiated a package with the bloc that would make the UK less attractive for EU migrants moving to the UK under freedom of movement rules, including an “emergency brake” on welfare payments.
After losing the plebiscite, he quit, ushering in a decade of political turmoil during which the UK has had six prime ministers as the country grappled with a series of global economic shocks and attempted to reshape its relationship with the EU.
“Do I regret the fact that there was, you know, it was a very tricky period after the 2016 referendum? Yes, I do. I mean, it was painful to watch,” Cameron said. He said he longed for a “sense of stability” in Britain.
Cameron also said states hostile to the UK had sought to influence the political debate around the referendum, but said he did not believe there was evidence Russian interference had affected the outcome.
“The fact is our adversaries — you know, Russia, China, North Korea, Iran — they spend a lot of time trying to sow division, distrust, and disharmony in our country,” he said.
As revealed Wednesday by Bloomberg, Cameron’s stance now is that reopening the debate on whether to join the EU, its single market or its customs union would be a mistake that risks both a “very long and painful argument” and also could jeopardize separate efforts by Burnham’s government to secure more favorable economic and security ties with the bloc. “We’ve got to make the partnership model work, and I think we can,” he said.
The former Conservative Party leader, who held the role for 11 years including six in 10 Downing Street, returned to government briefly under Sunak. More recently, he’s been advising Badenoch for her weekly House of Commons clashes with Burnham in PMQs.
“I started working for John Major in 1990 helping him with Prime Minister’s Questions,” Cameron said. “So in some ways, I’m doing the same job 36 years later. My career hasn’t really progressed.”
While he said he wouldn’t be writing the next Tory manifesto, Cameron did reveal his eagerness to serve in politics again, telling Husain he was “absolutely available” if Badenoch were to come knocking.
“I love public service,” he said. “If my party or anyone else asked me to do something, in public service, I would take that very seriously.”
Disclaimer: This report is auto generated from the Bloomberg news service. ThePrint holds no responsibility for its content.