Can weakening human rights ever protect them? Labour’s gamble raises fears on the left

Previously sceptical MPs now want to modernise ECHR to prevent an overreach of the law and losing to the far right

The sight of David Lammy and the attorney general, Richard Hermer, arriving in Strasbourg together to demand new constraints on human rights law would have been unthinkable a year ago. But as one ally says, quoting Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa's seminal 1860s novel The Leopard: If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change."

It was that sentiment that convinced Lammy's predecessor, Shabana Mahmood, now home secretary, that the UK should join the push to seek a declaration to change how the European convention of human rights should be interpreted.