The Human Rights Act 1998 enacted the ECHR into UK law. So what if the ECHR applies to a wider area than just the UK? The US constitution isn't indigenous to the state of Michigan, but that doesn't make it any less applicable there.

(You'd have had a better argument if you'd gone for 'unlike the US constitution, the HRA (and ECHR) isn't entrenched into UK law in a way that makes it hard for a government to repeal', which would have been a valid point).

> It's not like the UK actually follows half the things outlined in the ECHR

Of the 19 final declarations of incompatibility that had been issued by UK courts under the HRA by August 2011, only a single one hasn't yet been remedied (being the absolute ban on prisoner voting).

So no, I don't think that's true. The UK's actually pretty good at fulfilling it's ECHR and EU legal obligations (certainly compared to some Eastern European countries).