ECHR & ID Cards

The British right, bless it, has managed to turn both the ECHR and Digital ID cards into twin pantomime villains – one apparently plotting to drown the country in migrants, the other to chip us like labradors. They see “control” everywhere except where it actually exists.

But let’s deal in something exotic for a change – evidence. In the last decade, roughly 30,000 people have arrived across the Channel in small boats each year. The ECHR has directly intervened in around 1–2 percent of individual deportation cases – that’s it. Not thousands. Not hundreds. A few dozen. The other 98 percent are governed by British courts, British judges, and British legislation.

So when Badenoch thunders that we must leave the ECHR to “stop the boats,” it’s like burning down the fire station because you don’t like the sound of the siren. Even if we did leave, the Home Office’s own data show that only about 5–10 percent of removals fail because of human rights claims. Most collapse because of paperwork, bureaucracy, or lack of return agreements. In other words, our own incompetence.

Let’s be generous and run the numbers. If we left the ECHR tomorrow, the most optimistic projections – the ones that assume divine efficiency from the Home Office – show Channel arrivals might fall by 15 to 30 percent over five years. Not vanish, just dip. The central estimate hovers around 25,000 crossings a year, still more than enough to keep Nigel Farage in microphones.

The deterrent effect is fantasy. Migrants aren’t sitting in Calais reading Hansard. They don’t care whether Strasbourg can file an injunction; they care whether their families are alive. Leaving the ECHR wouldn’t stop boats; it would just stop Britain having to answer awkward questions when deportations go wrong.

And here’s the twist. For the government, “taking back control” now means fewer external checks on its mistakes. For the anti-ID crowd, “freedom” means fewer internal checks on their income. Both sides are united by the same impulse – don’t look too closely.

The right’s contradictions are now Olympic-grade. They won’t tolerate a Digital ID system that might expose a few untaxed jobs, but they’ll happily sign away the right to a fair trial because it makes them feel tough on borders. They cry “sovereignty” while dismantling the very legal framework that safeguards it.

Meanwhile, the left – ever the hall monitor of moral virtue – insists that any ID scheme is oppressive, while quietly trusting the same state to manage every other aspect of life. It shouts about “human rights” until a speaker offends them, then demands the microphone be switched off. Freedom for me but not for thee.

The truth? Britain has confused liberty with licence and bureaucracy with tyranny. It fears an ID card more than arbitrary power, and thinks shouting “sovereignty” is the same as having it.

We’ll spend years tearing up the Human Rights Act – at least four to six years of legislative chaos – to maybe shave 5 percent off deportation delays, while simultaneously screaming about a Digital ID that might, heaven forbid, make public services more efficient.

So yes – let’s leave the ECHR. Let’s celebrate the return of British sovereignty by re-litigating every human right from scratch, clogging our courts for a decade, and still watching the boats arrive because the real problem was never Strasbourg. And let’s keep pretending that freedom is cash-in-hand, fairness is optional, and ignorance is a patriotic duty.

The last laugh, as always, will be European – because when Britain finally tears up its own rights in a fit of nationalist pride, Brussels won’t need to take control. We’ll have done the job for them.