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MANCHESTER, England (CN) — Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has announced she would pull the country out of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and create a new “removals force” modeled on the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency to deport 750,000 people within five years.
Badenoch used her party conference speech on Wednesday to lay out a “blueprint for Britain based on conservative values,” which also includes cutting the size of the state, removing taxes and scrapping environmental policy to make the economy grow.
The centerpiece of the plan is to introduce a “golden economic rule” requiring half of all government savings to go toward reducing the deficit, which currently stands at 4.8% of GDP and is forecast to fall to 2% by 2030.
The ECHR is an international treaty that protects basic freedoms, which is enforced by the European Court of Human Rights.
Critics in the Conservative Party argue the international treaty undermines parliamentary sovereignty by blocking migration reforms, including deporting foreign criminals and migrants arriving by small boats from France.
But the proposals were overshadowed Tuesday by leaked comments from Shadow Justice Secretary Robert Jenrick, who revealed he had complained that he “didn’t see another white face” during a visit to Birmingham. Shadow roles in the U.K. are the opposition party’s answer to each cabinet position in the ruling government.
“That’s not the kind of country I want to live in,” he added. “I want to live in a country where people are properly integrated.”
Jenrick addressed the controversy from the conference stage, saying he “won’t shy away” from issues of integration and insisting his remarks were “an observation.”
Badenoch later defended him, saying he had raised a “legitimate concern about integration.”
Concerns over ICE-style force
Badenoch pledged to create a new removals force, modeled on ICE, that would be tasked with deporting 150,000 people per year.
It would be given more than $2 billion in funding and broad new powers, including the use of facial recognition capabilities to identify people in the country illegally.
Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp sought to play down fears that the proposed removals force would emulate the most aggressive tactics of balaclava-covered ICE agents.
“There are some examples in the U.S. where they have clearly used tactics that are too heavy handed, and people’s families have been separated,” Philp said at a conference fringe event. “We don’t advocate that sort of approach.”
Party tensions and Reform pressure
The conference, held in Manchester, took place amid growing pressure from Reform UK, the anti-immigration party led by Nigel Farage that is surging in the polls. It has already pledged to leave the ECHR and scrap permanent residency for non-British people.
The overlap between Conservative and Reform policies, especially on immigration, has fueled speculation about a possible pact or merger.
Reform’s rise has come at the Conservatives’ expense.
In the last couple of months, there has been a steady drip of former Tories joining Nigel Farage’s party, with 16 defecting to Reform as well as dozens more at the local council level. Many have claimed their old party is finished.
During the conference, Conservative MP Andrew Rosindell said the party should form a pact with Reform to defeat Labour. “At the moment my seat would almost certainly go to Reform,” he said.
It’s a view shared by most of the party’s supporters — many have already switched over to voting for Reform.
A YouGov survey found that 64% of Conservative members support a pact with Reform, and nearly half favor a full merger. The same poll showed that 50% of members want Badenoch replaced as leader before the next election.
Conservatives’ existential threat
Badenoch’s speech comes at a low ebb for the Conservatives.
Once dominant under Boris Johnson’s 2019 landslide, the party lost 251 seats in last year’s general election, its worst defeat in more than a century.
At this year’s conference, attendance was sparse. Shadow Chancellor Mel Stride’s speech on Monday drew a half-empty room.
In an era of rising populism on both the right and left, the Conservative Party is slipping close to the edge of being forgotten.
Courthouse News reporter James Francis Whitehead is based in England.
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