“We’re likely to go into the next election with Tories and Reform both promising to leave or hold a referendum. We need to get ahead of it,” they added.
However, the minister — granted anonymity like others in this piece to discuss internal government thinking — issued a warning based on bad memories of David Cameron bringing back insufficient concessions from the EU as prime minister, only to then lose the Brexit referendum.
“There is a risk you end up like Cameron” where you say you’re going to get reform “and you come back with not very much,” said the minister.
There are also risks that this might not go down well at the Council of Europe. Advocates of change have interpreted recent remarks in a Times interview by the organization’s head, Alain Berset, to the effect that there should be “no taboo” on discussing the rules of the organization overseeing the convention, as a sign that reform is on the cards.
But Berset told POLITICO that had not been his intention. “I am not calling for reform of the European Convention on Human Rights, nor do I support any effort that would weaken it,” he said.
“It should never be used as a scapegoat in domestic political debates. When states face complex challenges, the answer is not to dismantle the legal guardrails they themselves helped build. The proper place for dialogue is through our institutions, not through pressure on the European Court of Human Rights or attempts to bypass the system.”
