Leaving the ECHR: What’s at Stake for UK Rights and Peace?
- Talk2EU
- Aug 4
- 5 min read
Updated: Aug 7
By Talk2EU Contributors - August 2025
Some politicians and now entire political parties want the UK to withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). They’re selling it as “Brexit 2.0,” another chance to “take back control”.
But if we’ve learned anything from Brexit, it’s this:
We need to ask questions before it’s too late.
So let’s ask them now, shall we?
First of all: What is the ECHR?
The ECHR has nothing to do with the EU, and that matters.
It’s a human rights treaty the UK helped create after World War II, part of a post-war effort to make sure the atrocities of the 1930s and ’40s never happen again. And we’ve been part of it for over 70 years.
It protects things like:
The right to life
Freedom from torture
Freedom of expression
The right to a fair trial
The right to privacy
Protection from discrimination
Freedom of religion
The ECHR doesn’t tell the UK what laws to make. It just ensures that if your rights are violated and you can’t get justice here, you have the option to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights.
That external check matters more than people realise. Let’s talk about why.
Why Some Politicians Want Out
Supporters of withdrawal often claim:
It would stop asylum seekers from “gaming the system”
It would prevent “foreign judges” interfering
It would restore Parliamentary sovereignty
But here’s the thing: the UK already writes its own laws, controls its own borders, and has one of the most powerful governments in the world.
The ECHR just ensures those powers don’t come at the expense of basic human dignity.
So let’s be honest: pushing to leave the ECHR isn’t really about sovereignty. It’s about removing oversight, so the government can act without challenge, particularly when it comes to protest, surveillance, or migration.
And that’s not restoring freedom. That’s stripping away accountability.
What Would Leaving the ECHR Actually Mean?
Let’s take a closer look.
1. No External Protection From Abuse
Without the ECHR, there’s no independent court to appeal to if a future government violates your rights.
Imagine a government starts discriminating against single parents, disabled people, or migrants. They take away your benefits, detain you without trial, or restrict your right to protest.
What do you do?
If that same government writes the law and controls the courts, where’s your route?
You don’t have one.
And this isn’t a hypothetical. In 2016, the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with disabilities found evidence of “grave and systematic violations" of disabled people’s rights due to welfare reforms.
So, to be clear: it can happen here.
2. Trade, Diplomacy, and the Economy
Human rights aren’t just moral principles. They’re part of how the UK does business.
The EU‑UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement underpins both sides’ commitments to human rights, including the ECHR, and can even be suspended if fundamentals are breached.
It signals legal stability to trading partners and investors
Removing it would raise red flags globally
The UK’s trade agreement could be terminated immediately if it quits the ECHR.
The Joint Committee on Human Rights has flagged that withdrawal might undermine future trade negotiations and the UK’s human rights credibility.
We feel that leaving the ECHR would be much worse than Brexit in this regard.
3. The Good Friday Agreement
The Good Friday Agreement, which helped broker peace in Northern Ireland, relies heavily on ECHR protections.
Undermining that framework risks more than legal trouble. It risks political instability and peace at the heart of the UK.
Furthermore, the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee has warned that withdrawal would directly violate obligations in the Belfast Agreement.
📎Committee writes to NI Secretary on potential implications for Northern Ireland of leaving the ECHR
4. Rights You Might Not Know Came From the ECHR
ECHR rulings have:
Protected LGBTQ+ rights
Strengthened domestic violence laws
Safeguarded freedom of protest and the press
Limited mass government surveillance
Advanced disability rights and asylum protections
Take that away, and ordinary people like us, not just asylum seekers, lose.
The Online Safety Act (OSA): A Side Note
The ECHR is also likely to play a role in upcoming challenges to the UK’s new Online Safety Act, especially where surveillance and censorship clash with Article 8 (privacy) and Article 10 (freedom of expression).
Groups like Index on Censorship, the EFF, and Open Rights Group have warned that it could seriously erode free speech online.
EFF called the Online Safety Bill “a massive threat to online privacy, security, and speech,” warning it could allow scanning of private messages and weaken encryption.
Experts condemned the bill for undermining end‑to‑end encryption, impacting marginalized groups, and posing open risks to speech.
If we’re not part of the ECHR, we’d have no external court to appeal to in the event of potential abuses.
A Dangerous Path
Some parties say we don’t need the ECHR because they’ll create a “British Bill of Rights”.
But authoritarian governments always promise rights. What they don’t promise is accountability.
Think back to Brexit, do you remember what we were promised, and what was delivered?
If a future government removes your rights and controls the courts, who stops them?
No one. They get free rein.
“It Couldn’t Happen Here…”
We like to think the UK is immune to authoritarianism. But no country is.
We’ve just forgotten what it looks like.
And here’s the hard truth: once rights are gone, they’re incredibly hard to win back. Most of the rights we have today weren’t handed down; they were fought for.
Voting them away now means putting blind faith in every future government to never misuse that power.
That’s a dangerous assumption.
Conclusion
This isn’t about left vs right. It’s about basic decency, legal checks and balances, and the kind of country we want to live in and be known for.
We can stop this with one simple act: engagement.
But let’s not wait four years; start conversations now. Talk to friends and family. Push back against misinformation and apathy.
Because leaving the ECHR isn’t a policy tweak.
It’s a threat to everything we take for granted.
And if we let it happen, it won’t just be asylum seekers who suffer.
It’ll be all of us.
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