Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch delivers a speech at Policy Exchange in Westminster, Londo (Image: PA)
Kemi Badenoch hit out at a European court for blocking Britain from controlling its borders.
The Tory leader warned rulings under the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) have “morphed” in recent years and gave her strongest hint yet that she would pull Britain out.
In a major speech in central London this morning, Mrs Badenoch said: “Over the last 20 years the ECHR rulings morphed so fundamentally that they now limit our ability to control our borders or even fight in wars.”
When pressed if that meant she would leave the ECHRC, she added: “I have always been very clear that the ECHR should not stop us doing what is right for the people of this country and what is in our national interest.
“And if it continues to do so at some point we will probably have to leave.
“What I have not agreed with is deciding we should leave without having a plan for what that looks like and how to do so in a way that makes sense.
“We still believe in the rules-based order, we have to because we are a trading nation, I was Trade Secretary for a long time.
“Without rules then things just don’t work. But other countries are breaking the rules and we need to get serious about that and not pretend that those things aren’t happening and that’s really what I was us to focus on.”
Elsewhere in her address , she warned that the world is in an “era of change” and that Britain “must not be weak”.
She said: “At the very least, the Pax Americana of over half a century is evolving, potentially even ending.
“We may be witnessing a more fundamental reset, perhaps a return to the world of the strong and the weak, and in such a world, we must not be weak.
“Our foreign policy should support our national interest.”