Islington In Europe

Ten years ago this month that David Cameron dispensed with my services as AG. I had told him that his plans to scrap the HRA and threaten to leave the ECHR if it proved incompatible with his British Bill of Rights were unworkable and would not help solve our security or immigration challenges one bit. So it proved. When published, his plans were quickly shown to be flawed and never implemented. Ten years on, despite the repeated huffing and puffing, we still have both the HRA and the ECHR. This despite having had Suella Braverman as both Home Secretary and as a parody AG. One might have hoped that the penny would have dropped that the policy serves no useful purpose, as any minor benefit will be entirely outweighed by the downsides. We must be thankful that Rishi Sunak seems to have realised this as did the last AG Victoria Prentis. So it is depressing to see candidates for the Conservative leadership such as Tom Tugendhat return yet again to this theme. It has become a kind of ritual, without which no candidate feels they could be acceptable to the membership. And that I am afraid also shows how the Conservative Party continues to be mired in ideological fantasies that lead directly to its wipe out this year. For a Party whose members used to laugh at the inanity of Labour supporters singing the Red Flag at the end of their conferences, it is a sad reflection on where common sense has gone.