ECHR Badenoch to set out plan to leave treaty

Kemi Badenoch is expected to announce a plan this weekend to leave the European convention on human rights (ECHR) if the Conservatives win the next election, as the party attempts to halt a haemorrhaging of support to Reform UK.

- Pippa Crerar Rajeev Syal

The move will be seized on by political opponents as evidence the Tories have lurched to the right - Russia and Belarus are the two other European countries that have opted out of the ECHR - while it could lose the party support from the political centre.

The Tory leader's stance has hardened since last autumn, when she said leaving the treaty would not be a "silver bullet" to tackling immigration. In February, she said the UK would "probably have to leave" if the treaty prevented the government acting in the national interest.

Despite private concerns from one nation Conservatives that such a decision will force out moderate Tories, the party leader is understood to have signed off plans to leave the international agreement.

Badenoch is now expected to announce in a speech at the party's conference in Manchester on Sunday how the Tories would exit the ECHR, after a shadow cabinet meeting on the decision on Friday.