Badenoch's ECHR stance risks tearing up EU trade deal
The UK opposition leader's hardline policies on human rights and climate could collapse the post-Brexit trading relationship if she returns to power.
Kemi Badenoch has effectively committed the UK Conservative Party to a future of conflict with the EU. The opposition leader recently declared that anyone opposing her plans to withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) or abandon net zero targets would be deemed "not serious" and barred from standing as a Conservative candidate. She backed this up by withdrawing the party whip from Gavin Barwell, a member of the House of Lords who criticised her stance.
While Westminster views this as a desperate move to halt rightwing defections to Reform UK, European capitals should recognise the economic threat. Polls suggest a Conservative return to power is possible, potentially in alliance with Reform UK. If that happens, Badenoch’s ideological red lines would resurrect the spectre of a "no deal" Brexit by tearing up the legal foundations of the 2021 Trade and Cooperation Agreement.
The UK’s ECHR membership underpins the entire post-Brexit relationship. Articles 763 and 771 of the trade deal commit both sides to shared human rights values as an essential condition of the agreement. Article 772 grants the EU the right to suspend or terminate the deal if that commitment is breached. This clause exists primarily to protect peace in Northern Ireland, where the ECHR is embedded in the Good Friday agreement and Rishi Sunak’s Windsor framework. Pulling out of the convention would also jeopardise data sharing, criminal extradition, and the Gibraltar agreement signed on 15 July.
The threat is not limited to human rights. The trade deal's level playing field provisions rely on shared climate goals. Under Article 772, an act that defeats the object of the Paris Agreement is considered a "serious and substantial failure" to fulfil essential obligations. Ditching net zero commitments could therefore trigger the same suspension mechanisms as leaving the ECHR.
Conservative figures like shadow attorney general David Wolfson argue the EU would never detonate an important trading relationship over these issues. This repeats the complacency that characterised the original Brexit negotiations. Legal experts in Northern Ireland have dismissed Wolfson's claims that leaving the ECHR would not breach the Good Friday agreement. The EU’s recent victory over Hungary at the European Court of Justice demonstrates its willingness to enforce fundamental rights when a member state's vital interests are at stake.
Dismissing Badenoch as a "unserious" sideshow is a mistake Europe cannot afford. With the global order fragmenting under pressure from an aggressive Russia, a coercive US and mercantilist China, the UK-EU relationship is vital to European security. Keir Starmer’s diplomatic reset has hit the limits of Labour’s red lines on the single market and free movement. To safeguard European stability and trade before the next UK election, Brussels must take the initiative to deepen institutional ties, with a defence pact being the obvious starting point.
