Previously sceptical MPs now want to modernise ECHR to prevent an overreach of the law and losing to the far right
The sight of David Lammy and the barrister Richard Hermer arriving in Strasbourg together to demand new constraints on human rights law would have been unthinkable a year ago. But as one ally says, quoting Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s seminal 1860s novel The Leopard: “If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change.”
It was that sentiment that convinced Lammy’s predecessor, Shabana Mahmood, now home secretary, that the UK should join the push to seek a declaration to change how the European convention of human rights should be interpreted.
It was Mahmood who has made the determined argument from inside government that Labour must act to prevent the perceived overreach of human rights law or risk far worse if they lose the next election to the hard right.
And it is that message – reform or die – that has won over a considerable number of Labour MPs, including Lammy, a veteran of the struggle for racial justice and Hermer, one of the most eminent human rights barristers of his generation, who were once considered sceptics of that mission.
