Starmer’s close friend Philippe Sands has said that calls the quit the ECHR takes us back to the 1930s. Debating with former Tory Foreign Secretary Malcolm Rifkind – who said he’d changed his mind on and argues to ‘suspend recognition’ of the ECHR – Sands said on the Today Programme:
“I think it’s pretty clear what’s happening, Nick. I mean, this is a move that is essentially taking Europe and the world back to the 1930s. We know what that leads to, and it’s a lesson that I think people are going to have to take on board and learn pretty quickly. Britain led the world in 1945 in putting in place a series of rules and the idea that the United Kingdom would now abdicate that role to me is tragic.”
It wasn’t that long ago that Starmer’s other learned friend Attorney General Richard Hermer compared calls to leave the court to the Nazis. With friends like these…
Shadow national security minister Alicia Kearns told Times Radio she would have put a precondition on a China trip if she were PM:
“I would have put a precondition that I was not going to go if I was prime minister, unless Jimmy Lai was coming home with me. I would also put a precondition in the six months leading up to the visit that I wanted a reduction in hostile acts against our country. But that’s not what we saw. And actually, in contrast, what we saw was clearly the Chinese Communist Party did put a precondition, which was that the new embassy in London had to be signed off. So why is it okay for China to set preconditions and to make very clear red lines about what they require for a visit, but we go without having put any ourselves?”