Kemi Badenoch faces an obstacle with her plan to leave the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) as a new poll shows Britons back keeping the framework.
The Tory leader kicked off the Conservatives’ annual conference in Manchester on Sunday with a pledge to leave the ECHR as part of a plan to deport 150,000 people a year from the UK.
The plans have however not received support from the majority of Britons, according to a new YouGov poll.
The poll shows that 46 per cent of people want to remain in the ECHR, while 29 per cent wish to leave and 24 per cent voted that they were unsure.
Around seven in 10 of those who intend to vote for Reform UK backed plans to leave the ECHR (72 per cent), while 44 per cent of those who support the Conservatives backed withdrawal.
In his YouGov analysis, Matthew Smith said: “Kemi Badenoch will be hoping that this move will help coax some of the voters the Conservatives have lost to Reform back into the party fold.
“Our survey finds that 36 per cent of current Reform UK voters do indeed say it makes them think more positively about the Conservatives – although a similar number (39 per cent) say it made no difference to their views, and that they continue to dislike the Tories.”
The poll however also revealed that almost half (49 per cent) of Britons said they do not know much about the ECHR, with just five per cent claiming to know a great deal and 31 per cent saying they know “a fair amount”.
Polling guru Sir John Curtice told GB News: “This poll is the most detailed study of attitudes towards leaving the ECHR that has been conducted in recent years.
“It confirms the findings of previous polls that have regularly found that more people are opposed than are in favour of leaving. But in addition it gives us fresh insight as to why this is the case.
“Although for some withdrawing is attractive because they feel it would protect British sovereignty, others are concerned that the loss of rights could undermine the rights of British citizens in the UK as well as adversely affect the country’s international reputation.
“It is a reminder that in crafting policies designed to deal with immigration, politicians have to avoid giving the impression that those already living here might lose out too.”
A new poll shows most Britons want to remain in the ECHR despite a pledge by the Conservatives to withdraw from it
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PA/YOU GOV
Speaking to GB News after announcing her pledge to leave the ECHR, Mrs Badenoch said her shadow cabinet had been “unanimous” in backing the plan.
She said those who did not agree “cannot stand as MPs”.
Mrs Badenoch told the People’s Channel: “If you do not agree with leaving the ECHR, then you should not and cannot stand as a Conservative candidate at the election.”
When asked if she will kick people out if they rebel against the plans, the party leader replied: “They can be in the party but they cannot stand as MPs.”
Kemi Badenoch told GB News Conservative’s who do not agree with the party’s plans to leave the ECHR can’t stand as MPs
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PA
The Tories’ stance on the ECHR forms part of a so-called “borders plan” that also includes a Donald Trump-style crackdown on immigration, backed by a new “removals force” modelled on the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency.
The plan aims to deport 750,000 people over the course of the next Parliament, more than the 600,000 targeted by Reform UK’s mass deportation plan announced over the summer.
Asked where deportees would go if they could not be returned to their own countries, Mrs Badenoch was unable to say.
Describing it as an “irrelevant” question, she told the BBC: “People need to go back to their countries.
“They can go to safe third countries if that’s the best thing for them.”
A Labour Party spokesman accused Mrs Badenoch of being unable to answer “the most basic questions about the policies she’s supposedly spent months thinking about”.
The spokesman added: “It’s the same old Tory Party making the same old mistakes – and the public shouldn’t and won’t forgive them.”
The borders plan will also see a significant restriction on asylum eligibility and the abolition of the immigration tribunal and judicial review for immigration cases, with decisions made solely by the Home Office in almost all cases.
Mrs Badenoch will hope her new plan on immigration, which she insists is “credible”, can help revive her party’s electoral fortunes after a year that has seen the Conservatives slide into a distant third behind Reform and Labour.
In her closing speech at the Conservative conference today, Mrs Badenoch revealed further plans from her party, which include axing the Climate Change Act, ending rip-off university courses, slashing the civil service, clamping down on benefits, scrapping taxes on family farms, fixing Britain’s broken immigration model, and, in her biggest announcement to date, abolishing stamp duty.