UK politics and Human Rights: From New Labour’s Human Rights Act 1998 to the Conservative’s Bill of Rights Bill.

In this chapter we will argue that since the hey-day of New Labour’s 1997 general election manifesto and the rationale set out in Bringing Rights Home (written by Paul Boateng MP and Jack Straw MP), the relationship between the United Kingdom and pan European institutions, has deteriorated to such an extent that human rights have become increasing politicised. Since Bringing Rights Home set out the case for the enactment of the Human Rights Act 1998, the respect for human rights law (within the context of the European Convention on Human Rights) has arguably deteriorated to become something to be critiqued and treated as an imposition. Indeed, amongst some sections of popular and establishment thinking the case for domestic human rights reform and an explicit critique of the European Court of Human Rights have become a useful way to garner popular support. This is not to say that politicians and some academics who favour resetting the domestic protection of human rights and the UK courts’ relationship with the European Court of Human Rights are doing so from an unprincipled basis, rather this is a testament to how controversial the matter has become in the United Kingdom.