The sight of David Lammy and the attorney general, Richard Hermer, arriving in Strasbourg together to demand new constraints on human rights law would have been unthinkable a year ago. But as one ally says, quoting Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s seminal 1860s novel The Leopard: “If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change.”
It was that sentiment that convinced Lammy’s predecessor, Shabana Mahmood, now home secretary, that the UK should join the push to seek a declaration to change how the European convention of human rights should be interpreted.
It was Mahmood who made the determined argument from inside government that Labour must act to prevent the perceived overreach of human rights law or risk far worse if they lose the next election to the hard right.
And it is that message – reform or die – that has won over a considerable number of Labour MPs, including Lammy, a veteran of the struggle for racial justice and Hermer, one of the most eminent human rights barristers of his generation, who were once considered sceptics of that mission.
For many, it will be jarring to see how the UK has come to argue alongside countries like Hungary and Italy that the ECHR must advise domestic judges that they should narrow the definition of “inhuman and degrading treatment” as well as put curbs on the right to family life.
But Lammy and Hermer are in Strasbourg alongside others on the centre-left in Europe – Norway, Denmark, Iceland, Ireland – because of their view that the only way now to salvage the ECHR is to change how it can be applied.
Ministers believe the UK can be a particularly influential voice in the debate. Under Keir Starmer, another former human rights lawyer, there is no question of the UK leaving the convention itself. That matter is not up for discussion.
But the UK wants to be able to demonstrate quickly that national interest can be served and the public protected while remaining a member of the ECHR.
Since this autumn, the argument has become even more acute, with the Conservatives also now committed to leaving the ECHR, alongside Reform UK which has long made that argument.
Starmer himself, who wrote his first article for the Guardian in 2009 in defence of human rights law, is convinced that there are genuine instances of the convention being interpreted too widely, especially by the lower tribunal.
Too often, those are caricatures in the rightwing press, myths about how foreign judges won’t let criminals be deported because their children prefer the taste of British chicken nuggets.
But there have been more serious cases in recent years that have worried ministers, of child rapists permitted to stay in the UK because of the overcrowded nature of Brazilian prisons or some instances where healthcare systems not deemed as advanced in other countries have prevented the deportation of criminals.
This, ministers say, is their target for narrowing the interpretation of the law, not preventing genuine survivors of torture from claiming asylum.
In almost every case – despite what Nigel Farage or Robert Jenrick say – it is not actually judgments from Strasbourg causing the issue but the way that domestic immigration tribunals have been interpreting the convention.
What the UK and its 27 allies are seeking is a spring declaration from the ECHR that sets out stricter ways that domestic courts should interpret family life and degrading treatment.
Taken together, ministers hope those changes will see far fewer cases of dangerous individuals having their deportations prevented by the courts – and thus less ammo for the far right to use.
The counter argument, which many charities and campaigners have made, is that the answer to the far-right challenge to human rights law is not to try to appease them, but to defend the principle more robustly.
Unless Starmer is also prepared to be more vocal on that principle, there is a real risk that actions he hopes will help preserve human rights will alienate even more of his progressive voters and do little to convince anti-immigration voters on the right he has gone far enough.
