Every Conservative candidate must sign up to leaving the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) or face being barred from standing at the next election, Kemi Badenoch has said.
Mrs Badenoch kicked off the Conservatives’ annual conference in Manchester with a pledge to leave the ECHR as part of a plan to deport 150,000 people a year from the UK.
She told GB News on Sunday morning that her shadow cabinet had been “unanimous” in backing the plan, adding she had been clear the Tories “cannot have a party where people do not abide by manifesto commitments”.
The Tory leader told the Camilla Tominey Show: “If you do not agree with leaving the ECHR, then you should not and cannot stand as a Conservative candidate.”
Having initially been cautious about leaving the ECHR, Mrs Badenoch committed her party to the policy ahead of this week’s conference after commissioning Tory peer Lord Wolfson to examine the practicalities of such a move earlier in the year.
The policy forms part of a so-called “borders plan” that also includes a Donald Trump-style crackdown on immigration, backed by a new “removals force” modelled on the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agency.
The plan aims to deport 750,000 people over the course of the next Parliament, more than the 600,000 targeted by Reform UK’s “mass deportation” plan announced over the summer.
Asked where deportees would go if they could not be returned to their own countries, Mrs Badenoch was unable to say.
Describing it as an “irrelevant” question, she told the BBC’s Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg: “People need to go back to their countries.
“They can go to safe third countries if that’s the best thing for them.”
Asked where they would go, she said: “Not here, not here. They don’t belong here, they are committing crimes, they are hurting people.”
A Labour Party spokesperson accused Mrs Badenoch of being unable to answer “the most basic questions about the policies she’s supposedly spent months thinking about”.
They added: “It’s the same old Tory Party making the same old mistakes – and the public shouldn’t and won’t forgive them.”
The borders plan will also see a significant restriction on asylum eligibility and the abolition of the immigration tribunal and judicial review for immigration cases, with decisions made solely by the Home Office in almost all cases.
Mrs Badenoch will hope her new plan on immigration, which she described as “credible”, can help revive her party’s electoral fortunes after a year that has seen the Conservatives slide into a distant third behind Reform and Labour.
She insisted her plan would work “eventually” and described her party’s deteriorating poll numbers as “a small political price to pay”.
She said: “It’s not about being the first to announce a policy. It’s about having the best policy. That is what I’m offering.”
Asked whether she would resign if the Conservatives’ fortunes did not improve, she said: “The fact is I was elected to do exactly what I’m doing now and I think the Conservative members are going to keep their faith in me.”
