Is there any difference between the Tory party and Reform?

[MUSIC PLAYING] This is a global player original podcast. The interesting thing with Kemi Badenok is it's not that she's unpopular, particularly with voters. It's that they don't know who she is. So I ran a focus group on Thursday night in Northeast Hertfordshire. You know, this is traditionally a sort of true blue Tory seat. And this was with eight people, all of whom were previous Tory voters who had only abandoned the party in 2024. And I asked them, I said, do you know who the leader of the Conservative Party is to get into a discussion about how Kemi Badenok was doing? I couldn't get into that discussion about Kemi Badenok because only one of the group of eight knew who she was and that she was the leader of the party, which is pretty extraordinary. That is Luke Trill from the Pulsar's More in Common, on a focus group where virtually everyone in the room hadn't even heard of Kemi Badenok. Is it worse to be unpopular or is it worse to be unrecognised? As Kemi Badenok tries to lead her party into a new year of her leadership, has she worked out what the Conservative Party is for? Welcome to the Newsagents. The Newsagents. It's John. It's Emily. And that depleted band of brothers and sisters are heading towards Manchester for the Conservative Party conference, where they're trying to set out their distinct territory. And we've heard from Mel Stride, the shadow chancellor today, saying, we're at the party of fiscal responsibility. We're no longer going to pay more than we can afford. We've got to have a bit of rectitude in our spending and all the rest of it. The problem with that is, of course, the last Conservative government left Labour a fiscal black hole. We can argue over the size of it, but it was a substantial black hole where they had spent more than they could afford. They did promise things that there wasn't the budget for. And you've got a question, well, OK, if that is who you are now, how much distance are you putting between yourselves and the last government brackets which you served in? Yeah, I think there's one big question hanging over the next few days, which is how much those that are left, and by that I mean both Conservative MPs and the grassroots, the members, want to see the Conservatives reassert their own identity and how much they want them to become more like reform, looking like, sounding like reform. We've seen that change of mission over the weekend from Kemi Badenok, who's now said, after a year of pondering, it is right that the Conservatives leave the ECHR. In fact, for those of you who are wondering, we're going to do an explainer a little bit later with Joshua Rosenberg on what the ECHR actually does and doesn't do, just to kind of try and get under the bonnet of that one a bit. But I do think that it is a really interesting moment to see how the Conservatives are describing themselves, just as you say, and their relationship to the last four, five Conservative Prime Ministers that have been before. And Kemi Badenok gave an interview to our podcaster colleague Ann McKelvoy last week in which she described her own party as a distressed asset. And it's such an odd phrase on the one hand, you're like, well done, you for like, you know, the elephant in the room, well done, you for calling it out, good old fashioned honesty. Just say it as it is, you know, in the same way that Theresa May once called them the nasty party. But actually, I've just pulled up this definition of a distressed asset. And it says it's an asset that's in financial trouble, often leading to a sale at a discounted price due to financial strain default or potential foreclosure. In other words, it's the kind of phrase you use about something before you can sign it to the dustbin. And so I think it is a really, really big moment to see how Kemi Badenok and how those around her reposition this party where they can't fill the hall. They can't fill the timetable. There are speeches being made to empty chairs. They're trying to find out in real time who they are and who their supporters or putative supporters want them to be. And I think that question is still unanswered. As you say, it's the asset you want to get rid of. The last thing you want to keep hold of is a distressed asset. And that's how she's described her own party. Look, at my count, there are six living former conservative Prime Ministers. A mark of how the party is doing is to ask this question. How many of those people, John Major, David Cameron, Boris Johnson, Theresa May, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak will be at the Conservative Party Conference this week in Manchester? Do you know the answer to that? Well, I bet you it's zero. It's a round number. It's a round number. No one wants to go near. The brand has become more toxic, I think. Now, part of me admires the way Kemi Badenock is trying to take this. And, you know, the ECHR work has given them a day of headlines. Mel Stride has come out and talked about what he wants to do economically and accused reform of being way, way to the left in wanting to nationalise everything in its, you know, site. And so they are staking out a bit of territory that may be different. But also they're trying to outflank reform as well by wanting to create a kind of their own version of ICE, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Body, the people in America who are wearing the bandanas. Rounding up immigrants and basically checking around. Rounding up anyone who's brown, just taking them away and you don't quite know what's going to happen to them next. And I think that that is kind of OK. Well, that's worked very well. Also, I think the other thing that I thought was remarkable is sort of putting a number. We are going to get rid of 750,000 illegal immigrants in the first parliament. We're going to round up 150,000 per year. Hang on. How has it worked for the Tories so far to give numbers on migration? You know, David Cameron, tens of thousands net migration didn't happen. And every time you've set a number like that, it's led to failure and led to the emboldening of populist parties who say they're all bloody rubbish and reform will be kind of probably rubbing their hands at that. I think it's even simpler than that, isn't it? Which is what is the space that they're inhabiting now? Using your example of America, the MAGA right or the MAGA body looks at the old fashioned Republican and calls them Republicans in name only, Rhino. And they tend to be the fiscal hawks. They tend to be the sort of anti-Russia, pro-Ukraine, pro-Israel. America big in the world. Yeah, exactly. America has a place on the world stage and a responsibility on the world stage. And MAGA hates the Rhinos pretty much as much, maybe more than it hates the Democrats. So you're kind of asking, what is the conservative that sits between labor and reform? Is reform a party of the extreme right? Or is reform a party that joins the horseshoe of left and right in the same way that MAGA does? And if that is the answer, then what is the constituency that the Tories are going for? That's such an interesting question, because I think once you frame it in the US context, and of course our politics is completely different, we've got a parliamentary system, this is a presidential system. And a more fractured party system. And a more fractured party system. But what happened in America was that, let's use the financial parlance, we've had distressed assets. This was a reverse takeover. The Republican party was taken over by the much smaller band that was MAGA. And the Republican party still has a name. It still has the nameplate, the Republican party. But it is the MAGA party. And an elephant. Yeah, and an elephant. The Republicans of old school, of Mitt Romney, of George W. Bush. The Atlanticists sort of thing. Atlanticists outward looking, fiscally conservative. They're gone. They have no power anymore. And I feel we're halfway through that process in the Conservative party, where reform is gradually taking over the Conservative party. And the One Nation Conservatives, feeling less and less at home. Who again aren't going? Who aren't going? I think I must have made about 10 phone calls over the last 10 days of people who would have been central to former Conservative cabinets. None of them are there. I mean, it's an extraordinary thing. Just who will be represented in that hall or on that stage over the next three days? So, for every year that I've been going to Conservative party conferences, which is a lot, it was the wets versus the dries in the Thatcher era. And the wets were the people who were One Nation Conservatives. The Ken Clarks. Yeah, the Ken Clarks of this world. And, you know, others. There were all sorts who fulfilled that role. But the Conservative party today looks increasingly a party of the right without the One Nation Conservatives acting as some kind of bulwark, whether it be on ECHR, whether it be on fiscal policies, whether it be on mass deportations, whatever it happens to be. And you feel that the process by which the reformisation of the Conservative party isn't yet complete, but it's getting there. Well, already cosily installed in Manchester is our favourite pollster, Luke Trill, from More in Common. And, as I said at the beginning, one of the questions I think we're trying to ask is whether the Conservative members, the Conservative grassroots, the Conservative MPs, want to align themselves more with reform. And if they don't, Luke, is there enough difference now between the two parties? It's a really good question. I mean, there's no doubt there is a significant group within both the Tory membership and the Tory Parliamentary Party, who have kind of always wanted the Conservative party to be more like reform. I mean, you sort of saw that during the Brexit years. They wanted a more kind of full, hot-blooded, right-wing approach. But the strength of the Tory coalition has always traditionally been that, yes, it has had those people who are more on the right, but the sweep of the coalition has also gone through to people who are much more liberal in their outlook, in places like the Blue Wall. Conservatives used to hold almost every seat in places like Oxfordshire. For instance, they've lost all of those sins. And so I actually think what you're seeing at the moment in the Conservative party is a coalition that's actually quite split. And I think the slightly unusual decision by the leadership is the things that they have announced in the run-up to this conference, whether it is repealing the Climate Change Act or the decision to leave the European Court of Human Rights, are actually issues which split Tory voters down the middle. Obviously, ordinarily in politics, you want to try and wedge your opponents. You don't want to try and wedge yourselves. Do you think that they're making a classic mistake, which is actually a very similar one to the one that Labour seems to have made in the last six months, which is responding to the noise of reform? So you think that all the noise that's coming out of reform means that your own supporters want you to be more like that? I think that's absolutely right. I think that, I think the analogy with mistakes that left made is very correct. And I think in particular, there is a danger that the Conservatives are making a similar mistake to what I think reform makes sometimes, of thinking that X is Britain and thinking that the loud voices, people who post online are representative of right-wing views in general. And I think the danger for the Conservatives is, you forget there is this big chunk of what I would call institutional Conservatives. You know, they're right-wing on lots of issues, but fundamentally, they believe in our institutions. You know, they don't want, we've talked about before, they don't want to burn everything down. They like a Conservative Party that's stable. And when we ask people, what does the Conservative Party look like at its best? The thing which comes top is delivers a strong, stable economy. And yet, hearing very little on the economy from the Conservatives, it seems instead to be chasing after those voters that they've lost to reform or the most vocal of those voters that they have lost to reform. And its simple electoral logic is, if you're going to pitch yourself as reform light, those voters are just going to go for the full-fat version anyway. So, Luke, last week we spoke about the parlous position of Keir Starmer in terms of the British public. Where is Kemi Badenok? The interesting thing with Kemi Badenok is it's not that she's unpopular, particularly with voters, it's that they don't know who she is. So, I ran a focus group on Thursday night in North-East Hertfordshire. You know, this is traditionally a sort of true blue, Tory seat that shows how bad their loss was, that they lost it at the last election, because they previously held it, even in really quite difficult years. And this was with eight people, all of whom were previous Tory voters, had only abandoned the party in 2024. And I asked them, I said, "Do you know who the leader of the Conservative Party is to get into a discussion about how Kemi Badenok was doing?" I couldn't get into that discussion about Kemi Badenok, because only one of the group of eight knew who she was and that she was the leader of the party, which is pretty extraordinary, right? I mean, I know, you know, we often talk about the fact that most people are more politically disengaged than us and people in Westminster, but at this stage, formatories not knowing who the leader is, I think really shows that cutthroat challenge. And that underlines your point about being on X, which is such an unrepresentative way of gauging public opinion. You'd have thought politicians would have learned by now. I mean, Jeremy Corbyn thought we should have won the 2019 general election on the basis of how many likes his tweets would get. Completely. And it's interesting. I thought the challenge going into this party conference for the Conservatives was to answer the question, "What is the point of the Conservatives in a world where you have Reform UK?" And I don't think anything that they've done thus far has answered that challenge, you know? They've announced a reform-like version of a climate and environment policy. They've taken what was Reform UK's policy on leaving the European Court of Human Rights. What is distinctive about the Conservatives? And traditionally, that has always been the economy, and it does look like there's some space there, but they seem more interested in the moment of trying to... It's almost like they're still treating the split with Reform as a family feud, rather than a political opponent that they have to define and mark themselves that as different against. Do you think that's because Kemi Badenok is still actually arguing with her own front bench about the leadership? In other words, Generic has already declared that he would take the party out of the ECHR. Therefore, Kemi Badenok needs to close that gap with him. And one of the things I'm really interested in getting into, Luke, is your data on whether Tories across all the tribes that you describe are in favour of that as a policy. If you look at something like the European Court of Human Rights, you essentially split the Tory family down the middle. So the more right-leaning segments, you know, the ones who either want to burn it all down or the ones who prioritise immigration want to leave. But the other side of the coalition, the groups that we call established liberals, and actually even the group we call the Rooted Patriots, who are a sort of Red War group, concerned about immigration but are really hesitant to embark on a return to Brexit wars or Brexit dominating the national conversation, those two groups oppose it. So it's an issue which splits their own coalition. And I think it's interesting that Kemi Badenok has moved to this position because I think originally she was in the sceptical camp, right? She said she didn't think that it was going to be the silver bullet, but I think it's a sign of the pressure she is under. And the fact that ultimately she's been judged against Reform UK and the difference there. And there's a whole swathe of voters on the other side of the coalition who are ended up being neglected. And the danger is that some of those voters eventually go, "Well, you know, the Conservative Party's left me behind." Do you think that the Conservative Party, I kind of hate to use hyperbolic language, but this is almost becoming existential for them. I think if they can't answer the question of what do we stand for and what makes us different, it could well become existential. You know, I've spoken to some people here who said, "Well, you know, it's possible that, you know, Nigel Farage implodes and we're there to pick up the pieces." But when you're at that stage, when you're sort of waiting for this kind of act of God to help you as a political party, it's normally a sign of how difficult things have become. That said, electorates are very volatile. They change a lot. I do think, you know, it might not be a majority-winning space, but I do think if the Conservatives can define a strong economic message, which is around fiscal responsibility, things are very difficult. We have to take tough decisions to balance the books. There's no one making that argument, particularly at the moment. And I think that could be the space for the Conservatives to at least stabilise themselves. But to do that, they've got to make that the front of their offer. And I think if they don't, they're not going to answer that, "What's the point in this question?" And, you know, we know Starmer is already framing the next election as Reform v Labour. I think Nigel Farage would very much like to frame it like that as well. They've got to get back into the conversation. And Luke, on the question of net zero, which, as we've seen, you know, former Energy Secretary Claire Coutinho is now sort of coming out and saying, "No more net zero." And it's become deeply unfashionable as a cause for the Conservatives. If you are interested in climate change, if you do care about net zero, is there a world in which you go from being a Conservative voter to a Green voter under Zak Polanski? Or is that just a leap too far? Well, it's interesting. And there's no doubt Zak Polanski has had a good start as Green Leader. I think he knows how to capture the attention economy. I think his speech about rip off Britain at the Green Conference actually chimes with the public mood very well. But interestingly, I think the sort of quid pro quo of his decision to pivot towards this eco-populism is it probably makes it harder for him to win over those kind of soft Green voters in places like Waverly Valley or Herefordshire that the Greens won at the last election. And he's clearly pivoting them towards picking up, you know, former Labour votes in student towns and big cities. So I think under the current leadership, that is less likely to happen. And look, you know, climate change is an important issue for voters. It's not particularly salient at the moment. So I suspect there won't be many Conservative voters who would flip maybe to the Lib Dems over that alone. But I think there's a wider piece there, which is if you are someone who believes in tackling climate change, believes in international institutions, what is the glue that is going to keep you in the Conservative Party at the moment? And it's not clear. It might come out over for the rest of this conference. It's not clear what that glue is. And I think that is the real risk for them. Luke, great to talk to you. Thank you so much, as always. Thank you. Thank you. I'll see you tomorrow, Emily. Bye. News you can trust and the conversations that matter. With award-winning journalists at the heart of the stories from the UK and around the world. Breaking news here in Edinburgh. I'm Simon Marks. My American week is next. Reporting from the heart of Cardiff. Discover how today's story affects your life. Listen on our free global player app or the new LBC app. LBC, leading Britain's conversation. The news agents. Well, we're joined now by Joshua Rosenberg, solicitor, legal commentator, writer, with a sub-stack, a lawyer rights and former colleague of mine for many years. Joshua, it's good to have you with us. Thank you so much for talking to us. Look, the ECHR is endlessly in our public debate and conversation. And I kind of sometimes feel, do any of us have a real clue of what the ECHR is and what it does? I think there's a very fair question. I fear a lot of people still confuse it with the European Union and think it may be something to do with Brexit. Neither of those is true. The European Convention is an international treaty which was signed by the United Kingdom almost 75 years ago, 75 years ago this autumn. And it didn't really have very much impact for many years until 1966, the then Labour government allowed people to challenge the government of the day by taking a case to the Human Rights Court in Strasbourg. And it became even more effective almost exactly 25 years ago when the Human Rights Act, an act of parliament, came into force and that allowed judges in the United Kingdom to enforce the Human Rights Convention, which meant that people didn't need to go to the Human Rights Court. They could use these rights in the Human Rights Convention by just going to the courts of the United Kingdom. If we leave it, Joshua, what is at stake? Which of our human rights are at stake? I think it's probably fair to say that none of them are at stake. That's certainly the position that the Conservatives would take. They would say that we had human rights before the Human Rights Act was passed 25 years ago and before we signed up to the Human Rights Convention 75 years ago. And the courts will continue to provide those rights for people who feel that their rights have not been respected by public bodies. Obviously, there will be a difference because you won't be able to say, "Well, this is my right to family life. This is my right to respect for my correspondence." You won't be able to say, "This is my right to freedom of expression." And refer to those provisions in the Human Rights Convention. But obviously, English common law and statutes passed by Parliament will still be in force. And I think the most important aspect of it is that a whole generation of judges are used to the idea of rights. And if the UK were to leave the Convention and repeal the Human Rights Act, which is what the Conservatives are proposing, well, I think that it would leave very significant footprints in the sand. I think the judges would continue to enforce those rights. So let us consider a couple of things that are specifics about it. The first one I want to ask you about is that it jeopardises the Good Friday Agreement, which is, of course, the kind of main thing that people look to as the great achievement of the Blair government when there was peace in Northern Ireland. Does it jeopardise the Good Friday Agreement? The advice to Kimmy Badenock from Lord Wolfson, KC, the shadow attorney general, is that it doesn't. The terms of the British-Irish Agreement, which is a treaty and part of the Good Friday Agreement, he says, "Don't require the UK to be a party to the Human Rights Convention, and they don't attempt to stop the UK leaving the Human Rights Convention." It's perfectly true that the UK government had committed itself, he says, in the Good Friday Agreement to allowing direct access to the courts in Northern Ireland and remedies for breaches of the Human Rights Convention, including the power for the courts to overrule legislation passed by the Stormant Assembly if it's inconsistent with the Human Rights Convention. But the advice to Kimmy Badenock is that you can achieve that safeguard in other ways. And as far as the Conservatives are concerned, it isn't a problem, but if you remember what Kimmy Badenock said in her speech yesterday, she said that there are particular challenges in Northern Ireland. She said the difficult is not a reason to avoid action, they are a reason to work harder to get it right. And so to make sure this is an orderly and respectful process across the United Kingdom, she's asking the Shadow Northern Ireland Secretary, Alex Berghardt, to lead a review into union-wide implementation. Now, what that means is clearly she is concerned that this does require some looking into, and I think what she may have in mind is that even if the letter of the law is not inconsistent with the UK leaving the Convention, it is something which is taken extremely seriously, not just in Northern Ireland, but in the Republic as well, and it would be upsetting to the status quo, it would be disturbing, a lot of people would be uncomfortable, and it is something the Conservatives have got to look at. You've been very clear, Joshua, giving us the perspective from the Conservatives when they talk about their desire to leave the ECHR. Obviously, from a position of human rights groups like Liberty, they see this very differently, and they say that leaving the ECHR would put everyone's rights at risk, that it's a person's last resort for holding the state to account when it has abused their rights. They think that the government's already planning to weaken human rights in the UK through the Rights Removal Bill, and they also say that it would basically renege on our obligations that undermine the UK's credibility, that we are the country that formed part of this in the first place, and that the, I guess, the signals, the bat signals it sends out, if we were to leave, is that we don't really care, you know, what's happening in Ukraine, we don't really care what's happening in China, we've basically slightly given up on it. That's a very fair comment, and, of course, it's also said that the UK would be in the same position as Russia, which was thrown out of the convention, and Belarus, which was never allowed in. And it's worth noting that in the advice Lord Wolfson gave to Chemie Badenock, there were times when he said, "Look, this is a political decision, that's a matter for you, I'm only a lawyer giving you advice." And he accepted that there were circumstances in which there could be difficulties. But, of course, the whole point of what the Conservatives are considering is to ensure that Parliament can do, as Parliament thinks best, in the interests of the United Kingdom, and that the courts in the United Kingdom are not required to take account of decisions taken by a court in Strasbourg, an international court, which is criticised by those on the Conservative side for developing the law in all sorts of directions that weren't expected, for example, environmental protection, that sort of thing. And I guess we lose a lot of our relationships if we pull out of the ECHR with the 46 countries that are still, 45 countries that are still signed up. The EU would also be able to terminate policing, judicial cooperation with Britain. I mean, presumably none of those countries would want to receive any of our deportations, either, because we would then not be part of what they had already signed up to. That's very much the government's approach. The government says this one-in-one-out treaty with France that they signed the other week was possible only because France and the UK are members of the Council of Europe, the international body that administers the Human Rights Court, and it looks after the Convention, and the UK wouldn't have been able to sign this deal with France if the UK had shown that it wasn't interested in these international agreements. It's worth saying, however, Lord Wolfson denies this. He sees no reason why France wouldn't agree to a deal. And this is obviously a political decision. It's not a legal decision. And it's really how the whole thing feels. Which means that it's not consequence-free, just to suddenly say, "We're doing this." That's absolutely right. And Emily mentioned the EU. Now, you may say, "Well, what's the EU got to do with us? "What have we got to do with the EU?" But there's something called the Trade and Cooperation Agreement. That's an international treaty which sets out preferential arrangements in a number of areas. And in it, the UK and the EU reaffirm their respect for the international human rights treaties to which their part is. Now, Lord Wolfson says that for most of that agreement, there's no particular reason why there would be any problem unless the EU decided to throw out the UK. But he did accept that part three of the agreement which deals with criminal law enforcement is different. This covers, as Emily said, cooperation with Europol and Eurojust, extradition, mutual assistance, exchange of criminal records, DNA information, and even transfer of passenger name records when people travel on an aircraft into Europe. And the agreement says the EU could withdraw cooperation in these areas as soon as the UK leaves the Human Rights Convention. Now, Lord Wolfson says this is a political risk. He sees no reason why they should do this. They could do it anyway if they wanted to be difficult, just by giving us 12 months notice. But he says there's no escaping the fact that withdrawal from the ECHR would provide the EU with a ground to terminate part three of the trade and cooperation agreement, although, of course, the EU may decide to waive its right to terminate and carry on as before. I mean, you're painting a fair picture here, Joshua, but one that certainly sounds as if we are choosing isolation from many of the agreements and the institutions that are underway. I guess one of the things that this comes back to is, you know, we always hear the sort of crazy examples, don't we, of how the ECHR got in the way of Britain doing what it wanted, in terms of deportations, in terms of, you know, sending people back home or sending unwanted characters out of the UK, and whether Strasbourg, whether, you know, whether the ECHR got in our way. Now, isn't it right that, I mean, I think there's only been, there's been fewer than 30 cases involving deportations since 1980, and we've won more than half of those. That's perfectly true, and the sort of cases that make the headlines, often inaccurately, are cases in the domestic courts, in what's called the first-tier tribunal, what used to be the immigration tribunal, or the upper tribunal, which hears appeals, and often what's quoted in the papers are arguments which were put by refugee asylum seekers and rejected by the tribunal or rejected on appeal. So they have been rejected. I mean, sometimes we hear, you know, for example, I think the Albanian Chicken Nuggets was the one that sort of inflamed the headlines. But these are rejected, right? They've never been passed, right? They are, and there's a much bigger dimension. If you look at what the present government is proposing, what Shabana Mammoud first as Justice Secretary and now as Home Secretary is very keen to do, she wants to introduce legislation. Now, this legislation will apply only to courts in the United Kingdom, of course. It will either amend the Human Rights Act or amend other legislation or give guidance to judges or something. We haven't seen it yet. But if the problem is, as I think you've correctly said by quoting those statistics, if the problem is with the way that these cases are interpreted here, then the answer is to change the law here or to give guidance. Now, it's perfectly true. Nobody wants to be an immigration lawyer. It's very badly paid and you deal with very sad and distressing cases. But on the other hand, if you are looking to recruit immigration judges who specialize in this, will the only people who understand immigration law are people who've practiced it. And because the Home Office doesn't instruct these lawyers, they have their own staff who appear before these tribunals. All these lawyers have been acting for asylum seekers, people challenging the Home Office. So when these people become judges, well, there is an argument that they are sympathetic to the asylum seekers, less sympathetic to the Home Office. But that, if that is a problem, is something that can be dealt with domestically. It's not necessarily a problem caused by the Human Rights Convention and by the Council of Europe. So, you know, listening very carefully to what you've said, Joshua, you wonder whether Britain wouldn't be better off, and I'm not saying a Labour or Conservative point, wouldn't be better off staying in and trying to get reform of the ECHR, because we're not the only country that's a signatory that thinks there are problems with this, that a 75-year-old treaty may not be fit for purpose in 2025. That's absolutely right. If you go back a couple of months, slightly longer, to the end of May, an open letter was sent to the Council of Europe by the Danish Prime Minister and her Italian counterpart. It was signed by a total of nine member states of the Council of Europe. They were all EU states, which perhaps explains why the UK was not invited to join. But nevertheless, they questioned whether the Human Rights Court had extended the scope of the Human Rights Convention too far, compared with the original intentions behind it when it was first drafted, shifting the balance between the interests which should be protected. It was signed by Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland. And what they said was they believe that the way the court had interpreted the Convention had limited their ability to make political decisions in their own democracies and how they can protect their populations against challenges. And they quoted, for example, cases concerning the expulsion of criminal foreign nationals, where the interpretation of the Convention has resulted in the protection of the wrong people and posed too many limitations on the state's abilities to decide who to expel. Now, this is exactly the sort of argument that you have in the United Kingdom. And what these people are arguing is what these states are arguing is that the Convention should be changed. That is difficult. It requires agreement by all member states. It takes a very long time. But nevertheless, the argument is that rather than pulling out, the UK should be pressing for change. And given that other countries, these nine countries within Europe, have shown an interest in change, well, maybe it would be possible to get agreement among all the states in the Council of Europe to amend it, or at the very least to send a very clear message to the court, which is quite sensitive to political realities that this is simply not acceptable to the member states. Joshua, last question, deeply unfair, putting politics aside, should we pull out? Lord Wolfson told Kemi Bednock that she had a number of options. One, of course, was to pull out of the Convention. He knew that was something she wanted to do. Another was to repeal the Human Rights Act, or at least replace it with something else. And there were various permutations. But she received his final advice only last week. It's dated the end of last week. And within a couple of days, she had announced not only that she was proposing that the Conservatives, if elected at the next election, would pull out of the Human Rights Convention, but they would also repeal the Human Rights Act. So this is the most extreme version of the options presented to her by her shadow attorney general. I think there needs to be much more discussion before that is a policy. And what the Conservatives seem to have done by saying that anybody who wants to be a Conservative candidate at the next election has to support this policy, what they seem to have done is to shut down debate and say, "Right, this is over. This is what we're going to do. This is what we're going to stand on." Now, that may or may not be a good political decision, not something I can judge, but it's certainly not the only option she had. Joshua Rosenberg, thanks so much. Thanks for joining us. Thank you so much. My pleasure. The news agents. I was told in French that in the end, it's a message of real hope and optimism. I'm not always the character, but it would be enough for it to work. I said to myself, "We're going to get there." And I want to say it again. That is the resignation speech of Sebastian Le Corneau. If you haven't yet registered his name, that is because he was only Prime Minister for 28 days. He goes down as the pub quiz question answer of the least long-serving French PM. How do you say lives less long than a lettuce in French? Yeah. I mean, yeah. La vie d'une lette. Yeah. We're on trust territory at the moment. And the reason why this is so particularly bad for France is because they've had a series of these. We've had five French Prime Ministers in two years, all under President Macron, who is himself in a increasingly perilous position at the top of the ticket. Yeah. So you've got a president who cannot form a government or an enduring government because of the parliamentary arithmetic in the National Assembly, following his own decision to bring forward National Assembly elections a couple of years ago. And that has backfired spectacularly and left Macron looking like a lame duck. President and leaving Liz Truss feeling a whole lot better about herself. So Macron now has to basically decide. Does he just appoint somebody, a technocrat? He's kind of run out of, you know, political allies that can do this job. So either he just parachutes in a sort of technocrat and says, "We need to keep this going for another two years," or else he pulls the nuclear button called whatever and says, "Oh, sorry. I've got to bring forward the presidential elections, which aren't meant to be held until 27," or, I don't know, he scrambles together some kind of coalition and tries to find a way that he can appoint somebody of a political nature and get their budget through. At the moment, that ain't happening. It makes us all look rather sweet and stable. We'll be back tomorrow from the Tory party conference. See you then. Bye-bye. Bye. This is a global player original podcast.