The EU needs to make the UK protect human rights before it signs a trade deal with us – or we’ll lose them completely

I know the EU referendum is now history and Remoaners like me should pipe down and accept the result. Yet, it’s difficult when we’re told that Brexit means the most extreme assault on the Britain I grew up in and care about. I understand that we can no longer be a member of the European Union, but I don’t want to sit back as the Tories dismantle the welfare state and turn Britain into Singapore but with more rain, worse public transport and a dreadful record on human rights. Ripping up our human rights could have a profound impact not just in the UK but across Europe. A populist wave is threatening to engulf our continent. We have to protect rights here at home, otherwise we set a precedent that could usher in the horrors of the past.

The Leavers want to fundamentally reshape Britain in their own image. The same men who stood with Donald Trump outside his gold lift, Aaron Banks and Nigel Farage, understand they can drag Britain to the hard-right by continuing their social media assault on common sense and whipping up the vocal minority of message board reactionaries. As they do so, they push the Tories further to the right. Now we see Prime Minister Theresa May continuing her illiberal mission to withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights ECHR). The next Conservative manifesto is likely to include a pledge to rip up the most significant rights protection available to UK citizens. The only country ever to withdraw from the European Convention is Belarus, a country commonly known as Europe’s last dictatorship. Belarus withdrew so it could bring back the death penalty. Alongside Ukip’s call for a referendum on the death penalty sit a group of Tory backbenchers who are also keen to bring the gallows back.

A Britain outside the ECHR could trade torture equipment to the US (Trump has said that torture “absolutely works”) or do trade deals in exchange for military intelligence with the world’s tyrants. We have to stop this from happening. We can’t just sit back and accept the creeping Ukipification of Britain. That’s why I’m behind a plan to stop Theresa May from scrapping our human rights.

OK, it’s a slightly madcap plan – but all the best plans are. We’re crowd fundraising so we can take a battle bus of Britons – from human rights activists to lawyers to concerned citizens – to Brussels to lobby the EU not to give the UK a free trade deal unless it commits to guaranteeing human rights through the ECHR. Over 50 of Britain’s top legal minds including Baroness Kennedy QC, Lord Lester QC, Sir Geoffrey Bindman, Professor Francesca Klug and Sir Paul Jenkins agree with us. At this moment, the only thing our Government cares about is a free trade deal with the EU; if we can make human rights a condition, then we can save our rights.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the European Union made it clear that trade and human rights needed to go together. As new democracies emerged from the ashes of the Soviet Union, the UK led the way in promoting the possibility that these Eastern European countries could join the EU. Signing up to the human rights protections in the European Convention meant these countries were now eligible to join the EU. Joining the EU meant protecting human rights. But surely the reverse must be true also? If you want to leave the EU and want the benefits of free trade with the world’s largest market, then why shouldn’t you also have to guarantee human rights?

In kicking off this plan, we’ll be protecting the legacy of Winston Churchill. In 1951, when Churchill returned as Prime Minister, his government ratified the ECHR. The convention was the brainchild of Sir Winston himself, who proposed a Council of Europe “guarded by freedom and sustained by law”.

There is a certain irony in the current Prime Minister seeking to undo the legacy of one of her greatest predecessors, who brought peace in Europe and freedom back home, because she finds the enforcement of human rights a minor political nuisance. If Theresa May won’t protect our rights, then we must. We cannot allow Brexit to be hijacked by fundamentalists.

You can donate to make the battle bus happen here. Mike Harris is chief executive of 89up and the publisher of Little Atoms