Kemi Badenoch says it is 'not racist' to discuss refugee rule shake-up

Kemi Badenoch says it is ‘not racist’ to discuss changing refugee rules as leadership contender echoes Braverman with warning that the UK must be prepared to leave European Convention on Human Rights to stop Channel boats

Britain must be prepared to quit the European Convention on Human Rights if it has to in order to get the small boat crisis under control, a cabinet minister and potential leadership contender said today.

Trade Secretary Kemi Badenoch said that quitting the decades-old convention must remain ‘on the table’ in case the Strasbourg court that arbitrates on it rules against the Rwanda deportation plan.

Ms Badenoch also defended remarks last week by Suella Braverman, the Home Secretary, about changes to wider UN conventions covering refugees, saying it was ‘not racist’ to suggest they be updated.

She made the remarks in an interview with the Sunday Times as several Tory ministers and MPs from the right of the party use the annual conference in Manchester to put forward their leadership credentials.

They have begun to jostle with the party some way behind Labour in the polls, albeit with Sir Keir Starmer’s lead appearing to narrow this week.

Ms Badenoch, who was born in the UK to Nigerian parents, said: “It’s certainly not racist to talk about reviewing conventions which we joined 100 years ago. I think that is a ridiculous argument.’

It came as Mrs Braverman found herself at the centre of a furious row with celebrities including Elton John and Gary Lineker and even her Tory predecessor as Home Secretary over her hardline immigration stance.

Mrs Braverman launched an outspoken broadside against liberal public figures like the Tiny Dancer singer and the former England footballer, accusing them of lecturing the British people ‘from their villas and private jets’.

Last week, Sir Elton – who owns a £15million property on the French Riviera – said that Ms Braverman risked ‘legitimising hate and violence’ after a speech she made in the US accused migrants of ‘gaming’ the system to secure refugee status. And Mr Lineker, the market trader’s son who is now the BBC’s highest-paid star, tweeted: ‘She can’t possibly know that they [the migrants] are lying.’

Mrs Braverman told a US audience that international treaties, such as the UN Refugee Convention and the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), should be reformed.

She argued their definitions of what an asylum seeker is needs to be tightened, saying discrimination for being gay or a woman should not be enough to qualify for international refugee protection.

But an uncompromising interview with the Mail on Sunday she said: ‘What we are seeing here is out-of-touch pampered elites, lecturing us on how we should think about very, very serious issues affecting the majority of British people, such as illegal migration.

‘These people don’t have to wait in a queue to see a GP, they can just go private. They don’t have to worry about trying to afford a car or buy a house. The vast majority of British people are directly affected by the unprecedented scale of illegal migration. My job is to think of them first ahead of a virtue-signalling, elitist view from Hollywood Central.’

However, Ms Braverman’s speech to a Washington DC think tank was criticised by former minister Dame Priti Patel, who accused her of an ‘attention seeking’ attack on multiculturalism.

Dame Priti, who like Mrs Braverman is from the right of the Conservative Party, told Sky News’ Trevor Phillips on Sunday that her claim that multiculturalism had been a ‘failure’ was wrong.

Suella Braverman has launched an outspoken broadside against ‘pampered, out-of-touch’ celebrities who criticise her immigration policy

She suggested the Cabinet minister had failed to provide ‘some perspective and context’ around the situation in Britain, saying there had been ‘wider issues’ around community flare-ups in places such as Leicester, which saw unrest between Hindu and Muslim groups last year.

Dame Priti, 51, who like her successor was born in England to parents of Indian origin who arrived here via Africa, told Trevor Phillips: ‘I don’t know what the intention was around that – it might just be to get attention, to have the dividing lines in the run-up to a general election. I can understand that.

‘But you and I are sitting here today, we are the products of actual integration, multiculturalism, dynamic communities, people who love our country and want to contribute to our country, along with a hell of a lot of other people who have done exactly the same. I think that is something we should be proud of.’

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