The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is now in the run up to a referendum on â??renegotiatedâ?? membership of the European Union which will supposedly return some sovereignty to UK political institutions. The date of the referendum and the details of the â??renegotiationâ??, which in all likelihood will consist of changes of a secondary kind particularly since changes to the relevant treaties would trigger referendums in other EU member states with unpredictable consequence. The Conservative government is also making gestures towards repealing the Human Rights Act, which incorporates the European Convention on Human Rights into British law, and replacing it with a â??British Bill of Rightsâ??, and at the extreme may withdraw from the European Convention, leaving the UK as the only European nation apart from Belarus in that situation.
It looks like the Prime Minister David Cameron is happy to stay in the EU after minor changes and to keep the Human Rights Act and that he is not at all aiming to withdraw from the ECHR. I say this because he is an extreme pragmatist who does not aim for big shifts in Britainâ??s constitutional arrangements and relations with Europe, though as an extreme pragmatist he appears to send different signals to different people, so there may be some with a different impression.
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