Do British people want to leave the ECHR? Here’s what the polls say
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/echr-uk-rights-meaning-polls-b2842594.html
Posted by BestButtons
Do British people want to leave the ECHR? Here’s what the polls say
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/echr-uk-rights-meaning-polls-b2842594.html
Posted by BestButtons
31 Comments
Imagine being so dim that you actively want less rights.
Interesting results in the view of what certain politicians keep saying:
> We examined more than a dozen opinion polls conducted by polling agencies, such as YouGov, since 2013. The first, that year, found 48% in favour of withdrawal and 35% in favour of remaining in the ECHR. A year later, the public was evenly split (41% leave, 38% stay), and by 2016, following the Brexit referendum, 42% said Britain should stay in the ECHR while 35% wanted to leave. Since then, the balance has shifted steadily towards remain.
> By 2023, half of the respondents said the UK should remain a member, while only around a quarter favoured leaving the ECHR. A poll from June 2025 produced similar results: 51% in favour of staying, 27% for leaving and 22% unsure.
> The most recent YouGov data, published October 8, found that 46% of the public are opposed to leaving the ECHR, and 29% say the UK should withdraw.
> Even when polls tie the ECHR to issues such as deportations to Rwanda, support for withdrawal among the general public has not exceeded 38% since 2014.
Furthermore:
> Conversely, when respondents were given more nuanced options, support for withdrawal fell. In a 2024 survey, outright support for leaving was just 16% when respondents were offered alternatives such as “always abide by the ECHR even if that frustrates Parliament” or “remain committed to the ECHR but give Parliament the final word”. With such options, 66% supported some form of continued engagement with the ECHR.
I guess this doesn’t surprise most people:
> What is also clear from the polling is that Conservative and Reform voters are much more in favour of leaving the ECHR than Labour and Liberal Democrats voters. In the June YouGov poll on this issue, 54% of Conservative voters and 72% of Reform voters were in favour of leaving the ECHR while 75% of Labour and Liberal Democrats voters were against leaving.
And knowing more about the law doesn’t diminish the support for it:
> Research shows that attitudes towards human rights grow more positive as knowledge of human rights increases. A Scottish Human Rights Commission study in 2018 found that indifference often masks confusion rather than hostility.
> The Independent Review of the Human Rights Act in 2021 reached a similar conclusion, stressing that greater public understanding of human rights institutions strengthens support.
Refuse to take seriously until it’s a bus graphic
/s
If you want to leave and hurt everyone else (including yourself) just to solve a tiny problem then I gotta ask more questions about your ability to reason
TLDR; while support for leaving was higher previously, since Brexit, support for leaving is always lower than support for remaining in the ECHR, to varying degrees, when you ask a representative sample of the UK population.
I’m pretty sure the majority probs don’t know what it is or care.
Can anyone tell me why this is a priority in any way shape or form?
Why don’t most Brits not realise we created the ECHR? It is something we should be proud of.
Leaving the ECHR is completely unnecessary. We could probably do something like amending the HRA to limit its applicability to immigration matters. But perhaps the people lobbying so hard to leave the ECHR have ulterior motives beyond being able to deport criminals…
I wonder how many people responding leave to these surveys actually know what the echr is and what it does
Surely the solution is a group amendment to the act regarding refugees. We’re not the only country pissed off about it.
If we do it collaboratively we can retain the good parts and lose the nonsense.
This more shows how complex issues should not be reduced to sound bites. Brexit Pt2 – no thanks!
There should be accountability to the information political parties make.
I have no doubt we’ll have no annual leave or paid sick days in a few years with the way it’s all going
Imagine being so against immigration that you want the UK to leave anything regarding human rights.
Because its all that the god damn media and these MP’s SPAM EVERYONE WITH.
The next one will be withdrawing from the European continent itself.
I dont know much about it. But I’d guess it’s an overall net positive for “humans.” It’s obvious to me that politicians will cherry-pick certain parts of the ECHR that someone might disagree with, but this doesn’t outweigh the positives and form the basis for scrapping it entirely.
Thankfully Kemi Badencock won’t get anywhere near number 10
I imagine most British people haven’t a clue what the ECHR or what the consequences are either way tbh
Funny how the biggest act in protecting people’s rights are from an external body to the British government.
Don’t forget Britain was the heart of a globe spanning empire. Giving a monkeys about each and every person is something we’ve been “encouraged” to care about and not something any of our governments would have done of their own accord.
People will use single high profile cases about why the ECHR should be scrapped, forgetting the protection it offers everyone.
This is honestly a fantastic example of how the entire narrative in this country is being driven by a “silent majority” meme that is in reality actually an ***incredibly*** vocal minority who just refuse to ever shut the fuck up and now increasingly seem to feel justified in threatening unrest and even violence if we don’t cater to their every whim and demand.
Fuck the lot of them frankly, I’d sooner have them out of my country tbh.
It’s always funny when the people saying they “support the will of the people” aren’t actually representing majority opinion at all.
The people with vote with anything anti-establishment right now. The way things are going, that will gather pace.
People are fed up with the government inability to remove criminals.
It’s blamed in ECHR, the issue is nothing is discussed openly it’s all behind closed doors.
If it’s done properly maybe, but when ever is it done properly there’s always people behind closed doors using it for their own means.
It’s better to change the law and give people with no passports zero rights their here illegally you loose the right once you dispose of your passport.
People should read at least some excerpts of the ECHR instead (if not all of the document) before making any claims about it.
Voting for Brexit and Boris Johnson, nothing would surprise me nowadays.
best way to win votes is to do the opposite of what people want
We either all get the same rights, or none of us do.
Dealing out alternative rights depending on who fits what criteria is not going to work. Well, it won’t work for most of us.
Wow look at that the British people DONT WANT TO LEAVE SOMETHING THEY HELPED INVENT TO STOP INHUMANE ACTS.
Its almost like our politicians are trying to take away ALL the safety nets for the British people while slowly eroding all out support like : retirement age, nhs, disability benefits, housing…
Then rather than people getting mad at things like housing “for ventreans ” the goverment blame it on the immigrants (legal or not) while having enough money to do *both* money they use to pay compines they have a stake in to do horrendous things and “keep the goverments hands clean”
You know I would LOVE to be wrong and be a crazy theorist but papers and media organisations have uncovered reports on all of this multipul times over the decades… with cited sources photos and sometimes even emails and *statements*
So they distract with shineys ot with and outside forces to hate.
Hell to this day, even with every decent paper, decent media organiser and *goverment statements at the time* talking about how brexit was PURLY a trade deal issue at the time, people still talk about immigration linked to it.
Sometimes I wounder why people are so quick to belive liers on face value than do five seconds of neutral research “is brexit about immigartion” and checking sources.
ECHR is lucky, while they shortened down the name becouse they dont want to say HUMAN RIGHTS becouse it might tip people off, media isnt cutting the human rights part down.
In 2020/21, about 7% (44) of all lodged deportation appeals were successful while relying solely on the ECHR or Human Rights Act.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/foreign-national-offenders-appeals-on-human-rights-grounds-2008-to-2021/statistical-note-fno-appeals-lodged-and-allowed-on-human-rights-grounds-2008-to-2021#figures-on-fno-appeals-against-deportation
A quarter of Britons are prepared to throw out the ECHR and the Human Rights Act to stop those 7% of appeals? Is that 7% really worth the risk of it going tits up in the hands of politicians you can barely trust?
The next time The Telegraph or Daily Mail have a headline attacking the ECHR, ask yourselves why.
According to opinion polls, the majority of the population support the reintroduction of the death penalty, which is incompatible with the ECHR. People often want incompatible things.