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Tory splits have erupted over Robert Jenrick’s pledge to take the UK out of the European Convention on Human Rights.
The former immigration minister said it would take “decades” to negotiate reforms to how the body operates, so the only option is for Britain to quit.
But he was attacked by both James Cleverly and Kemi Badenoch, who both accused their rival of peddling easy solutions to difficult problems.
Jenrick said the ECHR was the reason why the last Tory government had failed to forcibly deport to Rwanda any asylum seekers crossing the Channel in small boats.
He said: “I have come to the conclusion that we have to leave the European Convention on Human Rights. I don’t believe it’s reformable. I don’t say this from a particularly ideological perspective, although I do believe in the sovereignty of parliament. I do it from having travelled across Europe.
“There is no consensus within Europe about how to reform it. The only thing that everyone agrees on is that any attempt to reform it would be a project of decades and I just do not think that we have time to do that.
“The public are demanding action on this. They are aghast at what is happening in the English Channel, and if we were lucky enough to re-enter government, the public would not give us a third chance if we then wasted years and years in an attempt to renegotiate our terms, which would be as doomed to fail as David Cameron’s attempt to renegotiate our membership of the European Union.”
But speaking at the launch of her leadership campaign, Badenoch – seen by many as Jenrick’s biggest rival – said: ” People who are throwing out numbers, saying we’ll leave the ECHR and so on, are giving you easy answers.
“That’s how we got in this mess in the first place.”
Meanwhile, Cleverly also took a thinly-veiled swipe at Jenrick’s ECHR stance.
“The simple fact is that if we try to grab shorthand answers and quick fixes, the British people will look at us and say ‘we’ve heard that before’,” he said.
“We need to be honest and open. We need to show where things are difficult and how they can be achieved.”
Cleverly said that when he was home secretary, he had arranged for a “small number” of asylum seekers to voluntary move to Rwanda, to challenge the UK Supreme Court ruling thayt the country was not safe.
He said: “That is how we would have defeated the Supreme Court. That’s how we would have got the flights off the ground. Not by soundbites or quick fixes but by graft, but by delivery and focus.
“This is what we have to do to regain credibility and get back into government.”
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