How Kemi Badenoch killed the Tory party

Now that Jenrick and Braverman have departed for pastures new, there is no point at all in following Reform around like a lost puppy. Nobody is going to vote for a pale imitation. If voters want the half-baked shtick of Reform then they will vote for Reform.

As such, the Tory party should focus on what it is good at. While Reform structs around like the proverbial chess-playing pigeon, the Tories still have diligent hard working MPs like Nick Timothy, running his own campaigns in concert with the party, (as opposed to Jenrick’s never-ending leadership bid). It’s not making waves but it does get noticed. The Tories can rebuild a reputation for quiet competence.

That, though, all comes unstuck with the commitment to leaving the ECHR. I don’t think it’s what the Conservative Party really wants. They are going through the motions, because they feel they have to. But they don’t.

I noted last year, when I set about a report on ECHR withdrawal, that most of the egregious cases come from British judges in British courts, remarking that the Human Rights Act was the real culprit. Expanding on this, I’ve happened upon a very worthwhile report that elaborates on the slop reporting we see on this issue. It notes how several media outlets misrepresent “ECHR” cases.

As I’ve remarked before, the Strasbourg court actually looks at very few UK immigration cases, with the lion’s share of the workload coming out of the British system. The report notes that very few immigration appeals are on human rights grounds.

Focus on, and so public awareness of, a relatively small number of deportation cases obfuscates how exceptional successful claims based on the ECHR are in practice. According The European Convention on Human Rights and Immigration Control in the UK: Informing the Public Debate to the latest available Home Office statistics running to June 2021, the number of foreign national offenders who successfully appealed against deportation on human rights grounds alone is very small compared to the number of foreign national offenders overall: around 0.73%. The number of human rights-based appeals allowed is also small as a proportion of the number of foreign national offenders who are deported from the UK each year: around 3.5%. Taking successful appeals based solely on the right to private and family life, the proportion is around 2.5%.

Insofar as there is a problem, the main problem seems to be with first tier tribunals. As such, it seems we need a serious overhaul of the domestic system, with new ministerial guidelines. Put simply, the case that the ECHR meaningfully obfuscates our deportation policies is not made. I remain convinced it’s a matter of political will.

In light of this, this is where you really do need the kind of engineer that Kemi Badenoch claims to be, in order to make this kind of surgical reform. Meanwhile, there needs to be a cost-benefit analysis of leaving the ECHR. The case is not made that it’s worth the hassle. Badenoch bases her design to leave the ECHR on the advice of Lord Wolfson, whose excellent report covers all the legal bases, but he himself notes that there is a political cost to doing so, which he doesn’t go into at all.

When you start looking at the political ramifications of even attempting something like this, it brings to mind all the unpleasantness over Brexit, at which point you have to ask if the same desired effect could be achieved by simply formulating well-crafted primary legislation and overhauling the immigration tribunal system. Everything I’ve read on the subject leads me to believe that the problems are much closer to home.

Since the Tory party is never going to win back the Ukippy right, and the Tory party itself is not overly enthused at the prospect of leaving the ECHR, the question must be asked: Why bother? Why not re-form as the party of sensible grounded policy?

Of course, this is just a thought exercise now since the politics are now set in stone. Having committed to ECHR exit, staking her leadership on it, Badenoch simply can’t u-turn on this. She could perhaps quietly back away from it, but I don’t think she would get away with it. It might well be that Badenoch as inadvertently walked into a trap of her own making - with policy that pandered to potential defectors who’ve now defected, and is now an albatross around their necks that prevents them reverting to what they really are - unable even to appeal to those who may have decamped to the Lib Dems.

There is now only one exit from this dilemma, and that’s for the party to rid itself of Kemi Badenoch, at which point, nobody will care if the party exists at all.