Starmer knows exactly how to speed up deportations

Keir Starmer literally wrote the textbook on human rights law. His European Human Rights Law: The Human Rights Act 1998 and the European Convention on Human Rights was published in 1999.

- JOHN RENTOUL

Twenty-six years later, he is rewriting his own book as prime minister. Two weeks after taking office last year, he told fellow European leaders: “We will never withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights.” He said that his new government approached the issue of migration “with humanity, and with a profound respect for international law”.

But something happens to prime ministers after they have been in office for a bit longer than two weeks.

Tony Blair, for example, was responsible for the Human Rights Act that was the subject of Starmer’s book. He went along with the civil liberties hoopla about “bringing rights home” and was briefly proud of Labour’s achievement in making it easier for citizens to gain access to their ECHR rights in British courts.

It was not long, though, before he was chafing at the restrictions that this imposed on his government's ability to deport people convicted of serious offences because they faced the danger of torture in their home country. And Blair ended his decade as prime minister being defeated in the House of Commons for the first time on a bill to allow terrorist suspects to be detained without charge for 90 days.