It is an axiom of political debate that once you compare your opponents to Hitler’s Nazis you have definitely lost the argument. That golden rule seems to have escaped the notice of the Attorney General Lord Hermer, who, in a speech to the Royal Institute for International Affairs (RUSI) defence think tank did just that.
Hermer, a close friend and fellow human rights lawyer colleague of Sir Keir Starmer, told RUSI that both Nigel Farage’s Reform UK and Kemi Badenoch’s Tories were echoing Nazi ideology that placed national law above international agreements with their threats to withdraw Britain from the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR):
But does Lord Hermer really have Britain’s best interests at heart?
Our approach is a rejection of the siren song, that can sadly, now be heard in the Palace of Westminster, and in some spectrums of the media, that Britain abandons the constraints of international law in favour of raw power… The claim that international law is fine as far as it goes, but can be put aside when conditions change, is a claim that was made in the early 1930s by ‘realist’ jurists in Germany, most notably Carl Schmitt, whose central thesis was, in essence, the claim that state power is all that counts, not law. Because of the experience of what followed in 1933, far-sighted individuals rebuilt and transformed the institutions of international law, as well as internal constitutional law.
In the 1930s, Hitler did pull Germany out of the League of Nations, forerunner of the UN. But to draw parallels between that and the debate over the UK’s membership of an organisation staffed by unelected judges and lawyers that overrides the wishes of an elected parliament is going wildly over the top.
Both Farage and Tory Shadow Justice Secretary Robert Jenrick have floated the possibility of withdrawing Britain from the ECHR over its obstruction of the deportation of illegal immigrants, on the grounds that their human rights come first. Founded in 1950, in the wake of the defeat of Nazi Germany in the second world war, the ECHR was, however, designed for a very different world to the one that we find ourselves in today. Mass migration by land, sea and air was unknown and national borders were strictly guarded.
Hermer’s smearing of Reform with the taint of Hitler’s Nazis is a clearly coordinated stepping up of Labour’s campaign against the insurgent party that was launched this week. Keir Starmer attacked Reform’s economic plans, which he compared to Liz Truss’s ill-starred and short-lived premiership.
But does Lord Hermer really have Britain’s best interests at heart? If you wished to construct a model of a caricature human rights lawyer representing and defending this country’s declared enemies, then Hermer would be your man.
In the course of his long legal career at Doughty Street and Matrix Human Rights chambers before entering government last July, Hermer represented such figures as Gerry Adams, the Sinn Fein leader and apologist for the IRA’s campaign of terror; spoke out in favour of Isis bride Shamima Begum’s return to Britain; and defended a whole host of convicted Isis and al-Qaeda operatives and activists. He has also advised Caribbean countries on obtaining reparations for slavery from Britain.
Since his elevation to the House of Lords and his appointment as Attorney General by his chum the Prime Minister, Hermer has overseen the prosecution of people involved in the riots that followed the Southport killings last summer and approved the equally controversial ceding of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius.
Nigel Farage lost no time in hitting back at Hermer’s speech. The Reform leader told the Daily Telegraph that it was ‘disgraceful’ for him to compare the growing campaign for withdrawing from the ‘outdated’ ECHR to 1930s Germany. He said that Britain’s national interest was endangered by the arrival of ‘dangerous young men crossing the Channel’ and added that ‘Starmer and Hermer are out of touch with British public opinion and these insults can only strengthen our case’.
Comments