I used to live in Belfast, and I say this without hesitation – it is the greatest city in the world. I have never lived anywhere more kind, more welcoming, or more determined to make you feel at home.
People there had every reason to be wary, suspicious, scarred by the past – and yet they weren’t. They opened their doors and their lives.
And the past is not some distant story. Friends of mine, people my own age, in their 20s and 30s, grew up in a world where they checked under their parents’ car before getting in.
That’s why peace there feels so precious, and why my blood boils at the thought of it being put at risk – by the likes of Nigel Farage, Robert Jenrick, and the ultra-right wanting to leave the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
Let me explain: The Good Friday Agreement (GFA) put an end to three decades of bloodshed between unionists and nationalists – that killed more than 3,700 people – in a way that many believed was impossible.
Peace rests on the GFA, and the GFA rests on the ECHR. Pull that thread, and you unravel the entire settlement – peace, power-sharing, and the Union itself.
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The agreement promised the people of Northern Ireland that their basic rights would always be protected, no matter who they were.
The ECHR enshrined that guarantee.
That means if either Stormont or Westminster passes an unfair law, or if someone’s rights are abused, they are guaranteed justice. Both communities can trust the system because there’s an independent set of rules everyone must follow.
Those guarantees disappear if we leave the ECHR.
Set aside your views on the constitutional future of Northern Ireland, the debate does not need catapulting forward by reckless, self-centred politicians who want to leave the ECHR.
Farage said last month: “Can we renegotiate the Good Friday Agreement to get the ECHR out of it? Yes.”Jenrick claimed last year that the Tory Party would ‘die’ if it didn’t advocate leaving the ECHR.
Even former Labour Home Secretary Jack Straw asserts that leaving the ECHR won’t impact the GFA.
What these people don’t seem to realise is that they’re gambling with peace, and have no understanding of British values.
In Farage and Jenrick’s case, this is classic short-term political opportunism. They know leaving the ECHR won’t fix anything but could break everything.
Farage’s pitch is that this is all about immigration. He insists that leaving the ECHR is the only way to ‘take back control’ of our borders – which is, incidentally, also what he said about leaving the EU.
But look at the facts.
Less than 5% of immigration is illegal.
The UK’s total spend on illegal immigration – including accommodation – accounts for less than 0.5% of our country’s total budget.
The restoration of the Houses of Parliament, the scandal of Covid PPE write-offs, and the cancellation of the northern leg of HS2 have all cost us more.
So, no, this is not a crisis. It is not even close. It is a manufactured grievance.
Is it a concern? Sure. Should the Government get its act together? Yes. But let’s be honest about scale and consequence.
When we left the EU, we scrapped the Dublin Regulation, a simple rule that makes the first country you arrive in handling your asylum claim. With no replacement, a 2023 Durham University report suggested it is now the main driver of small boat crossings.
Here’s the bit no one wants to say: net migration since June 2019 – before we left the EU – quadrupled within four years.
But that’s what Farage does best: he sells anger, not solutions. He has built a career out of telling people someone else broke our country – immigrants, Labour, Europe – anyone but him.
To my mind, by every single metric, our great country is worse off since Brexit. Why would anyone trust him again – especially with something as sacred as peace in Northern Ireland?
When I lived in Belfast, I saw every day how much people had endured and how much they had given up for peace. So many of them still live with first-hand or inherited trauma on a scale people living on mainland Britain could never understand.
I was born in Manchester, but Belfast made me who I am. The very fact that an English boy could move there and be welcomed so generously underscores just how far that country has moved forward.
Today, Northern Ireland is not defined by its past but by what it has to offer the world. Belfast itself is alive with art, music and nightlife, while the infamous walls that once divided the city showcase the way forward.
That is what the Good Friday Agreement and ECHR did. It gave an entire people the chance to live without fear and build a future.
We have not considered risking peace in Northern Ireland like this since the ceasefire in 1994.
And as for the myth that the ECHR is some foreign imposition. It was literally drafted after the Second World War – by us!
It is essentially a list of values we designed and exported to the world.
What does it say about us if we are prepared to abandon our own work, to burn down our legacy, simply to satisfy the theatrics of a millionaire?
Farage’s dark, divisive, and backwards politics are not who we are. Not really, not in our core.
So, no, Farage is not leading a silent majority; he is exploiting the fears of a noisy minority, pointing the finger anywhere else but at himself.
Every time Farage talks about tearing up the ECHR, remember that he’s essentially advocating burning the peace that holds the United Kingdom together.
Peace and stability cannot be treated like a political toy. You cannot love our country when your only plan is to light fires, destroy the foundations that protect its stability, and walk away.
You cannot be a patriot if you are willing to throw all that away.
Belfast deserves better. Britain deserves better.
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