TORY leader Kemi Badenoch will go hard after Reform voters today with a pledge to walk away from the ECHR unless it reforms.
Branding fellow politicians “naive” she will warn Britain has for too long played by the old rules in a dangerous world and must work to change global institutions.
Tory leader Kemi Badenoch will go hard after Reform voters today with a pledge to walk away from the ECHR unless it reforms[/caption]
The Opposition boss, who is in third place behind Labour and Nigel Farage’s party, will use a major speech to warn the Strasbourg court must not be hijacked by left-wing activists.
She will say: “International law should not become a tool for NGOs and other critics to seek to advance an activist political agenda through international bodies and our domestic courts.
“And if international bodies are taken over by activists, or by autocratic regimes like China or Russia, we must use our influence to stop them. And if that fails, we will need to disengage.”
Reform and a number of senior Tories want to quit the European Convention on Human Rights all together, as well as other international treaties that stop Britain from clamping down on illegal migration as well as blocking foreign deportations.
In her first major speech on Foreign Policy, Ms Badenoch will declare she is “a conservative. Not a cosmopolitan internationalist. Not a supra-nationalist. Not a neo-con. But a conservative realist.”
But she will warn: “We must stop being naïve about international affairs. We’ve let ourselves be fooled into believing that international law alone can keep the peace.
“When faced with a regime with no respect for the law, we need to be realistic.We can no longer simply put our trust in international partnerships or supranational institutions as ends in themselves.
“Where these work for us and deliver in our national interest we will embrace them.
“NATO remains vital for European defence. We should always prioritise closer trading relationships with open economies, and as a trading nation we need to protect the rules that underpin global commerce.”
She will add: “Our foreign policy should seek to support our national interest.
“We should review those alliances, methods and approaches which have served our world well for three generations; working together to the greatest possible extent with those nations which share our values. But our sovereignty must be at the core of our foreign policy.
“The United Kingdom must accept reality. No-one owes us a living. No process is an end in itself. We can no longer hide behind vapid statements that were, at best, ambitious twenty years ago and are now outright irrelevant.
“It is time to speak the truth: the world has changed. And we are not ready. So, we must change too.”
