It is both bizarre and depressing that ‘Human Rights’ has become a boo phrase for many Conservatives. The protection of the rights of the individual against an over-mighty state has been one of the main principles of conservatism for as long as it has been an -ism, and the post-war attempts to make this British tradition a universal principle ought to make conservatives proud. Instead, we are perturbed by what courts can do with the unexceptionable ideals of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), and so we are searching for a new way of cleansing the bathwater without – I hope – losing the baby.