Keir Starmer’s Human Rights Lawyer Chum is Shipwrecking His Government

 

WILL JONES

From handing over the Chagos Islands to changing the law to put Gerry Adams in line for compensation, from clamping down on tweets to going after Israel, Keir Starmer has consistently made decisions that owe more to the tendentious theories of human rights lawyers than sensible politics and the national interest. Behind many of these bizarre decisions is his old chum Richard Hermer KC, a human rights lawyers of some three decades whom Starmer parachuted into the Lords to serve as his Attorney General, and whose doctrinaire Leftist legal advice is now shipwrecking his Government. The Telegraph‘s Gordon Rayner has more.

When Sir Keir Starmer picked his first Cabinet, Dame Emily Thornberry was waiting by the phone, ready to be appointed as Attorney General – the role she had been shadowing for the last three years.

Instead, Sir Keir picked a man who had no background in politics, Richard Hermer KC, a friend who was given a peerage in order to enter Parliament and become his chief legal adviser.

Lord Hermer, 56, who donated £5,000 to Sir Keir’s Labour leadership campaign in 2020, had the advantage of being a full-time lawyer with more than 30 years of experience, rather than a politician whose legal work was in the distant past.

Sir Keir, it was said, trusted him to give unbiased opinions rather than trying to please him with favourable interpretations of the law. But that long career in human rights law also meant Lord Hermer had accumulated a collection of clients and cases that would not always sit comfortably with his role as a Cabinet Minister.

As we know, they included Gerry Adams, the former Sinn Fein President, whom Lord Hermer represented when he was sued by victims of IRA bombings.

Mr. Adams is now in line for taxpayer-funded compensation after Sir Keir decided to repeal a law that blocked him from claiming damages for internment in the 1970s.

Lord Hermer was acting for Mr. Adams in a private case in 2023, which was unrelated to Sir Keir’s decision to change the law, and Downing Street has refused to say whether he was involved in discussions about the law change.

But his presence in Government has been keenly felt ever since he was parachuted into the job. In accepting the role of Attorney General, he became the first person since 1922 to take on the job without ever serving in Parliament.

He was soon pressed into action following the riots sparked by the stabbing of three girls in Southport last July.

It was he who advised Sir Keir that it would be lawful to charge social media users with stirring up racial hatred online, which led to controversial prison sentences. He later said people could not “hide behind a keyboard” and would find themselves in a cell if they incited racial and religious hatred online. …

But it is Lord Hermer’s involvement in decisions about foreign policy that have the most far-reaching implications.

He was deeply involved in the decision to withdraw the U.K.’s objections to arrest warrants being issued against Israeli officials by the International Criminal Court, and was instrumental in the decision to suspend some export permits for weapons to Israel last year.

He also said Britain had an “obligation” under international law to hand over the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, even though an International Court of Justice advisory opinion on the matter was in no way legally binding.

Although he has never been an MP, Lord Hermer has staunch Left-wing views that have not wavered since his student days. …

Critics believe he has become too powerful in Government. He has issued instructions to lawyers in Government departments to “stand up for the rule of law” and send him “full and frank advice” on the legality of Government decisions.

This, Dr. Yuan Yi Zhu, a senior fellow at Policy Exchange, said in the Spectator, is a sign that the Attorney General effectively held a veto over policies and that lawyers were giving directions to elected politicians, rather than the other way around.

Worth reading in full.

Via The Daily Sceptic 

Featured image: Reuters, lexpress.fr

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