Keir Starmer’s top legal officer, Richard Hermer, has compared demands by the Tories and Reform for Britain to pull itself from international courts to 1930s Nazi Germany
Keir Starmer’s top legal officer has apologised after making a “clumsy” speech in which he appeared to compare calls to pull Britain out of international courts to Nazism.
In a speech on Thursday, Lord Hermer said international agreements needed to be reformed but criticised a “pick and mix” approach to treaties, which he likened to Nazi Germany’s strategy to ensure the state was more powerful than the law. It comes after the Tories and Reform UK both either committed to or flirted with leaving the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) if they were in power.
A spokeswoman for the Attorney General said Lord Hermer has apologised and regrets his choice of words. “The Attorney General gave a speech defending international law which underpins our security, protects against threats from aggressive states like Russia and helps tackle organised immigration crime,” he said,
“He rejects the characterisation of his speech by the Conservatives. He acknowledges though that his choice of words was clumsy and regrets having used this reference.”
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Education Minister Catherine McKinnell defended Lord Hermer’s speech, saying it had been “quite thoughtful”. She told Times Radio: “Any discussion around withdrawing from the international stage just supports people and the agenda of people like [Vladimir] Putin. And we’ve seen the results of what is going on in Ukraine.
“And we’re absolutely committed to our international security, but also upholding international law and the UK playing its part in supporting and upholding that. And I think it’s an important discussion and debate to be had.”
Giving the annual security lecture at the Royal United Services Institute, a defence think-tank, Lord Hermer said: “The claim that international law is fine as far as it goes, but can be put aside when the 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 1933, far-sighted individuals rebuilt and transformed the institutions of international law, as well as internal constitutional law.”
Lord Hermer said that ditching international treaties would provide “provide succour to [Vladimir] Putin”. He said such demands were “reckless and dangerous” and risk making the UK “less prosperous and secure in a troubled world”. He added that such arguments would be more appropriate in “a university debating chamber” than the real world.
Nigel Farage has previously said the first thing he would do if he won a general election would be to remove the UK from the ECHR. Tory leader Kemi Badenoch has also flirted with the idea of ditching the treaty, saying if the ECHR continued to stop the government acting in the country’s national interest, the UK would “probably have to leave”.
Lord Hermer admitted that international law needed to be “critiqued and reformed and improved”, but said the Labour government’s approach was “a rejection of the siren song that can sadly now be heard in the Palace of Westminster, not to mention some sections of the media, that Britain abandon the constraints of international law in favour of raw power”.
In one part of his speech, the Attorney General, who is the PM’s chief legal adviser, hit out at former Tory PM Boris Johnson, saying: “No one can sensibly argue that the bombast of Johnson increased the standing of the United Kingdom in the globe – that people took us more seriously as a result of his shtick, that either allies or adversaries were impressed by the doctrine of ‘cakeism’ or thought our reputation or reliability enhanced by legislating to deliberately breach international law,”
Richard Holden, Tory shadow paymaster general, told Times Radio Lord Hermer’s comparison of those who criticise the ECHR to Nazis is “outrageous” and comes as the latest “in a series of embarrassing interventions from Lord Hermer.”
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