Removal from the European Union, breakdown of the rule of law, the removal of human rights: what next would this once-proud beacon of democracy be forced to surrender? Unlike what some seem to believe, Human Rights are not just a perk for asylum seekers. They protect us all from abuse, including potentially from our own government.
Following a narrow majority in the 2016 Referendum, the United Kingdom left the world’s largest trading bloc. Initially a post-war peace project, the European Union had become the foundation of many of our rights and protections, with shared minimum standards for trade, employment, food and health & safety. Yet many UK citizens were persuaded that the EU, and particularly freedom of movement, was the cause of their problems.
“We must stop the immigrants!” they declared
As a result of leaving the EU, migration to the UK from EU member states did fall. There were, however, other consequences. Trade became more difficult and often, for small traders, impossible, although not problematic for larger businesses. Restrictions on freedom of movement affected tourism and business travel, as well as the availability of European migrants to work in care, healthcare, and on our farms. Withdrawal also impacted the Good Friday Agreement, which had brought to an end decades of violence.
Although EU migration reduced, migration from non-EU countries increased dramatically. With the Dublin Regulation no longer applying to the UK, the system for sending asylum seekers back to their country of entry into Europe ceased. Knowing this, many now consider the dangerous crossing to the UK worth the risk. And so, following Brexit, far more migrants arrive in the UK than before. In 2024, 36,816 asylum seekers arrived by small boat, an increase of 25% over 2023. If the primary driver for Brexit was a reduction in immigration, it failed.
“Illegal immigrants are a danger to our women and children” they said
In July/August 2024, nationwide horror followed a mass stabbing in Stockport that left three children dead and ten injured and led to renewed anger about “illegals”. Claims circulated that the suspect was a Muslim illegal immigrant, recently arrived by small boat. Sharing these claims, Nigel Farage publicly questioned whether the police were withholding information. Following the spreading of inflammatory misinformation and incitement to protest on social media, widespread disorder ensued, during which mosques and hotels housing asylum seekers were attacked. Fires were lit outside a hotel housing 200 asylum seekers in Wath upon Dearne, by angry protestors chanting “burn it down” and throwing missiles at windows and police. In Southport alone, 53 police officers and three police dogs were injured.
While there is no suggestion of Farage directly inciting violence, former counter-terrorism police chief Neil Basu accused him of undermining the police, creating conspiracy theories and failing to condemn the violence.
In a democracy, angry mobs and vigilantes have no role in the justice system. The rule of law ensures that everyone is subjected to and protected by the same laws. This includes evidence-based policing, due process through the judicial system and presumption of innocence until proven guilty.
Angry mobs may also have other agenda: of the 889 people eventually arrested for their part in the violent disorder in July/August 2024, 41% had previously been reported for crimes associated with domestic violence. More recently, in September 2025, a British Sikh woman was allegedly raped by a man saying ‘‘You don’t belong in this country, get out.” Are these the people we should trust to “protect our women and children”?
“We will deport the immigrants!” they pledged
In August 2025, Nigel Farage issued a statement: “Young, undocumented males who break into the UK illegally should NOT be free to walk the streets anywhere. They must be detained and deported.” Should Reform UK win the next general election, he pledged to ensure their deportation by withdrawing the UK from the European Convention on Human Rights.
At the launch of Reform UK’s Operation Restoring Justice programme he also pledged to disapply the 1951 Refugee Convention, the UN Convention Against Torture, the Council of Europe Anti-Trafficking Convention (lest they be “used by activist judges to frustrate deportations”), and to repeal the UK Human Rights Act and Equality Act, 2010. These would be replaced with a “British Bill of Rights”, which would make no mention of “Human Rights”; would apply only to UK citizens and those with a legal right to live in the UK; and would be based on Reform UK’s vision of what our rights should look like.
“We need you to relinquish your Human Rights protections”, they said
The direction of travel is not difficult to predict. In early September, as the UK Parliament returned after summer recess, Nigel Farage travelled instead to the US where, before a US congressional committee, he compared the UK to North Korea and asked US politicians and businesses to put pressure on the British government to halt “the really awful authoritarian situation that the UK has sunk into”. Such statements have no grounding in reality.
The European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) was established to ensure the atrocities of World War II were never repeated. Member states pledge to respect democracy, the rule of law and human rights. Since the Human Rights Act, 1998, sixteen of the Convention’s eighteen rights and freedoms are incorporated into UK domestic law, meaning alleged violations are heard in the UK courts.
Some of these protections are integral to the events outlined above, and provide protections to the vigilantes as well as to their victims: the right to liberty and security and a fair trial; no punishment without law; the right to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly. Since 1980, the ECHR/Human Rights Act have been used just thirteen times to block a proposed deportation.
It’s not about immigration but isolation, power and control
If Reform UK gets its way, we will be in danger of allowing our human rights to be gambled away in return for streets free of “foreigners”. Yet the ECHR is not the problem; it never was. The pledge to remove it is yet another means of directing anger at others rather than finding a genuine structural solution for problems.
Our Human Rights protections are not just a perk for asylum seekers. The oversight of the European Court of Human Rights protects us all from abuse including potentially, by our own government. The threat by a possible future government to remove these protections would further weaken the UK and her people, making it all the more necessary that we cling dearly to those protections.
Failing that, we join Russia and Belarus as the only European states not signed up to the ECHR. Is that really what we want?
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