Defenders of the European Convention on Human Rights, from John Major to Keir Starmer, have peddled the fallacy that Winston Churchill was the brains behind it. He was no such thing, argues Yuan Yi Zhu

Six decades after his passing, the legend of Sir Winston Churchill remains undiminished. Almost all of his contemporaries have faded into history. This is probably why many defenders of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) routinely invoke him to defend Britain’s continued membership.

According to their version of history, which has been repeated by figures as different as Sir Keir Starmer, Sir John Major and Baroness Chakrabarti, Churchill was the brain behind the ECHR as well as the European Court of Human Rights, which he conceived as a bulwark for the free world against totalitarianism. To leave the Convention would betray his memory, as well as “real” Conservatism as embodied by Churchill.

But as my

© City A.M.