The UK must look again at international agreements, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has said.
In her first major speech on foreign policy, Badenoch said if the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) continued to stop the government acting in the country’s national interest, the UK would “probably have to leave” the treaty.
Speaking during a key week for international diplomacy, she also called for Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer to boost defence spending by pulling funds from development aid, welfare and scrapping the Chagos deal.
It comes as US President Donald Trump has been putting pressure on European leaders to increase defence spending.
Responding to journalists’ questions after her speech at an event hosted by the Policy Exchange think tank, Badenoch said: “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.”
Setting out how rules were critical for a trading nation like the UK, she added: “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 want us to focus on.”
Badenoch was speaking the day after a series of international events to mark the third anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Trump has demanded Nato allies raise defence spending to 5% of GDP and opened talks with Russia, excluding Ukraine, on ending Putin’s war.
Meanwhile, there has been a deepening rift between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, with the US President falsely suggesting Ukraine started the war and branding Zelensky a “dictator”.
Badenoch urged the PM to go further than her party’s previous pledge to spend 2.5% of GDP on defence by 2030, saying this was “no longer sufficient”.
She said cutting international aid could take that total to 3%, and called on the government to find further savings on the welfare bill, as well as by ditching the multi-billion pound Chagos deal.
“There will be painful decisions on government spending,” she said.
“Any country that spends more interest on its debt than on defence, as the UK does today, is destined for weakness.”
On Thursday, Sir Keir will visit the White House and signal a shift in the government’s approach to bringing about peace, including stepping up UK military support and taking a bigger role in Europe’s security.
Sir Keir will be making the case for Ukraine’s direct involvement in any peace talks, warning that an insecure settlement without security guarantees for Kyiv could embolden Russia to attack again.
Badenoch raised her concerns that the world may be seeing “a return to the world of the strong and the weak” with the threat from “a new axis of authoritarian powers” including Russia, China and Iran.
On Trump’s negotiations with Putin, she said: “The danger is that aggression does not simply go unpunished but ends up being rewarded.”
She also reiterated her position that international courts are being used by charities and other organisations “to advance an activist political agenda”.
The ECHR was established in 1950 and sets out the rights and freedoms people are entitled to in the 46 signatory countries.
The treaty is a central part of UK human rights law and has been used to halt attempts to deport migrants who are deemed to be in the UK illegally.
The treaty was also recently cited in a case that allowed a Palestinian family the right to live in the UK, after they originally applied through a scheme designed for Ukrainians.
During the Conservative leadership election, Badenoch said leaving the treaty would not be a “silver bullet” to tackling immigration but last week said her party would review the ECHR and Human Rights Act.
Responding to the speech, a Labour spokesperson said: “If Kemi Badenoch was really the ‘realist’ she says she is, she’d be apologising to the British people for the damage she and her party did to our country.
“Kemi Badenoch was part of a Conservative government which hollowed out our armed forces, made us more reliant on Putin for our energy needs and diminished Britain’s standing on the world stage.”