Editorial: Northern Ireland must leave the European Court of Human Rights along with the rest of the UK

​It has become increasingly clear that the UK must leave the European Convention on Human Rights.

​That framework was drawn up in the aftermath of World War II, but has become dated in two key respects.

The first is that the political and social situation in Europe in 2025 is unrecognisable to that which prevailed in 1945 and its aftermath. Then Hitler had been violently removed from power, but only after inflicting a holocaust and starting a war in which 50 million plus people were killed – the most ruinous war in history.

The second is that the ECHR has been interpreted in an increasingly expansionist way by activist judges, backed up by tiers of human rights lawyers who see the world in the way that the (at best) naive Keir Starmer KC and his attorney-general Lord Hermer see it. A world in which the UK must always submit to international law, no matter how absurd that legislation might become.

There have been two stark examples, among many, of the problems with the Strasbourg court. One is the way in which the UK has been left essentially unable to police its borders. Some high-minded folk say that that is wrong, that the UK could control its borders to end out-of-control immigration and stay within the ECHR. But to all intents and purposes, it can’t.

The second is the way in which the ECHR has repeatedly cited to justify the disgraceful, imbalanced legacy investigations in Northern Ireland, which have turned against the state, in favour of terrorists.

However, when the UK leaves the ECHR an Irish nationalist uproar is certain. Therefore, to avoid a repeat of the Irish Sea border, in which this province does not in fact quit Strasbourg but the rest of the UK does, it is very welcome that politicians including Baroness Foster and Suella Braverman are thinking ahead about this necessary departure ​so that it includes NI.