The short answer
Whether the UK should leave the European Convention on Human Rights is genuinely contested. Those who want to leave say it stops elected governments controlling immigration and hands the last word to unelected judges. Those who want to stay say it protects everyone's basic rights, holds the Good Friday Agreement and devolution together, and that most of Britain's immigration problems are made at home. Leaving is now Conservative and Reform policy. Labour wants to stay in and change how the Convention is used.
What the ECHR is
The European Convention on Human Rights is a treaty from 1950, drafted with heavy British involvement after the Second World War. It sets out basic protections: the right to life, a fair trial, freedom from torture, respect for private and family life, free expression. It is enforced by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, and it has nothing to do with the European Union. In 1998 the Human Rights Act brought the Convention into domestic law, so people can rely on it in British courts. That Act is the link between the treaty and the legal constitution this site describes.
The case for leaving
The argument for withdrawal is mostly about sovereignty and immigration. On this view the Strasbourg court, and the domestic judges applying the Convention, have expanded rights in ways that stop the country removing people it wants to remove, and overrule decisions that voters elected a government to make. A 185-page review by the Conservative peer Lord Wolfson concluded that the Convention, above all Article 8 on family life, places real constraints on any government trying to run a firm immigration policy, and that leaving is legally possible. Robert Jenrick has argued the Conservatives will "die" as a party unless they leave. For supporters, this is the clearest case of power moving from elected politics to law, which is the heart of the Starkey Thesis.
Sources: OpenGlobalRights on the Wolfson review, BBC News
The case for staying
The argument for staying is partly about rights and partly about the practical wreckage that leaving might cause. The Convention protects everyone, not only migrants, and gives an ordinary person a way to hold the state to account. Britain would join a very short list of European states outside the system, alongside Russia and Belarus, which carries a diplomatic cost. Withdrawal reaches into the Good Friday Agreement and the devolution settlements for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, all of which are built on the Convention, so leaving could reopen questions many thought settled. Critics also argue that most of Britain's asylum backlog and slow removals are caused by domestic law, under-staffing and administrative failure rather than by Strasbourg, so leaving would not fix what supporters promise.
Source: OpenGlobalRights, legal and political challenges
Where the parties stand
The politics moved fast. In October 2025 the Conservatives made leaving the ECHR and repealing the Human Rights Act official policy, and Kemi Badenoch said she would not let anyone who opposed withdrawal stand as a Conservative candidate. Reform UK has made an ECHR exit central to its identity and has put a withdrawal bill before the Commons. The Labour government wants to remain a member but is looking at how far it can change the way UK courts interpret the Convention, especially Article 8. The fuller record is on news and coverage and among the voices who agree and disagree.
Source: The Conversation
What the public thinks
Opinion divides along party lines. Polling has found clear majorities of Conservative and Reform voters in favour of leaving, and clear majorities of Labour and Liberal Democrat voters against, with no settled majority either way across the country as a whole. Petitions calling for withdrawal have so far attracted modest numbers of signatures. The issue is intense but not yet a national consensus, which is part of why the parties are fighting over it.
Source: The Conversation, a decade of polls
What leaving would actually involve
Withdrawal is governed by Article 58 of the Convention and takes effect six months after notice. That is the simple part. The hard part is everything attached to it: unpicking the Human Rights Act, renegotiating or accepting strain on the Good Friday Agreement, managing the devolution settlements, and absorbing the diplomatic consequences of leaving a system almost every European democracy belongs to. Leaving the Convention is close to unprecedented, which is why even supporters accept it would be a major and contested undertaking rather than a quick fix.
How this sits with the thesis
This site argues Starkey's case, and on that case the ECHR is the clearest example of the shift from the political constitution to the legal constitution. But the honest position is that leaving is contested, uncertain in its effects, and would not on its own repair the wider settlement. The sequenced version of what a government could do, and the road that reforms rather than exits, is set out on the plan, and the strongest replies are on the case against.
Is the ECHR part of the European Union?
No. The European Convention on Human Rights is a separate 1950 treaty enforced by the Strasbourg court. The UK left the EU in 2020 but remains in the ECHR.
Has any country left the ECHR?
Withdrawal is very rare. Greece left under its military junta in 1969 and returned, and Russia was expelled in 2022. No established democracy has left and stayed out, which is why the step is treated as major.
Would leaving the ECHR stop the small boats?
Supporters say it would remove a key legal block on removals. Critics say the backlog is mostly caused by domestic law and administration, so leaving would help less than promised. The Rwanda case is the clearest worked example, on the Rwanda page.
