MANCHESTER, England — Former Tory leadership hopeful Penny Mordaunt endorsed the U.K. pulling out of the European Convention on Human Rights on Tuesday, in a marked shift from her previous position.
Speaking at the POLITICO Pub at Conservative Party Conference, Mordaunt — a former Cabinet minister still seen as a potential contender for the Tory crown — commended current Leader Kemi Badenoch’s decision to withdraw from the ECHR if the Conservatives re-enter government.
“I do support that policy,” Mordaunt said. “Kemi has been right to do the hard yards behind it.
“She hasn’t just done the hard yards by reading a Policy Exchange [think tank] report and getting the legal eagles on the case — she’s actually thought how we would do it, as well as what the right answer is.”
Mordaunt, who twice ran for the Conservative leadership, definitively said in 2022 that she wouldn’t take Britain out of the ECHR, which is a frequent bugbear of British politicians who see it as binding their hands on some aspects of immigration policy, should she become prime minister.
During last year’s U.K. general election campaign, Mordaunt stressed the ECHR needed reform and told the Telegraph she would be prepared to leave. Going further on Tuesday, Mordaunt told POLITICO: “If you can’t reform it, then you’ve got to do something else.”
Badenoch has said future Conservative parliamentary candidates must back British withdrawal or they won’t be allowed to become MPs, stressing that “we cannot have a party where people do not abide by manifesto commitments.”
Mordaunt narrowly lost her Portsmouth North constituency in July 2024 but has made clear that she wants to reenter parliament. “I’m not done yet,” she said Tuesday. “There are things that I want to get done and so I shall try and get back.”
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