Lord Hermer, it is remaining in the ECHR that imperils our human rights
For an eminent barrister to regret a 'clumsy' choice of words is rather like a distinguished heart surgeon owning up to being wobbly with a scalpel.
Just as we ordinary folk expect pillars of the medical profession to be careful with our atrial chambers and pulmonary veins, so we pay Lord Hermer KC to be precise in language and wise in judgment.
When the Attorney General delivers a setpiece speech that is the exact opposite, forcing him to make amends for having compared anyone who questions our membership of certain international conventions to a Nazi jurist, then he is advertising his own incompetence.
As it happens, I wrote speeches for three Foreign Secretaries and one Prime Minister and even I could work out that it was best to avoid 1930s or Nazi references. Apart from my stubborn belief that Basil Fawlty was not a model of public oratory, the inevitable row would obliterate the message of the speech.
And what was Lord Hermer's message? I want to be fairer than he deserves and concentrate on his argument because I think he was trying to be reassuring. After 32 years at the Bar, he may even have changed his mind about something.
Lord Hermer is trying to swim with the tide created by the Defence Review, published on Monday, which confirms plans to increase military spending to match the most perilous international situation arguably since 1945.
It may sound strange but the Attorney General is re-positioning himself as, if not a hawk, then at least a realist. He denounced 'legal romantic idealists' for being 'dangerously naive' and willing to confine Britain to 'irrelevance in global affairs'.
Instead, he argued that loyalty to international law was consistent with a 'hard-headed' approach to British interests in a dangerous world.
Lord Hermer failed to repeat a doctrine he outlined last year that Britain must not just obey international law but 'go further than simply meeting our obligations' – surely the essence of 'legal romantic idealism'.
But that was all of seven months ago; the new Lord Hermer no longer entertains such purism. He even thinks that treaties should be subjected to 'evidence-based criticism' and 'proposals to reform' while international organisations must avoid 'blindness or indifference to public sentiment in their member states'.
When a human rights barrister shows sympathy for public sentiment, you know that something is afoot. Ironically enough, Lord Hermer's speech was his attempt to be moderate. He was trying to occupy the middle ground between 'romantic idealists' on the one hand and 'pseudo-realists' on the other, the latter being people who supposedly want to do away with international law altogether.
But there is a problem: he doesn't mean it. Look at the asymmetry of his language: the idealists are naive, but the 'pseudo-realists' are imitating Nazis.
And he stubbornly evades two central questions. Is it still the Government's position that Britain must go further than just obey international law? Or is that an example of Old Hermer-ism that is no longer operative?
More seriously, why is it always wrong – even shocking – to withdraw from an international convention? They all provide for states to depart. Why would exercising that right imperil the whole system?
Lord Hermer thinks that his critics want to 'pick and mix', breaking some elements of international agreements and obeying others. But if that were true, there would be no point withdrawing from any convention: we would just ignore them.
The fact that Robert Jenrick wants to leave the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) does not make him an enemy of the rule of law. It just means that he wants to use the procedure for withdrawal in Article 58 because he believes that continued membership no longer serves the British people. What is so wrong with that?
For example, the British people have a security interest in their government being able to deport foreign nationals who commit serious offences. Keeping them here, no matter how dangerous they might be, breaches the state's obligation to protect its own people.
Yet the courts have interpreted the ECHR in a way that effectively compels us to keep many foreign national offenders. Articles 3 and 8, which respectively prohibit torture and guarantee family life, are routinely used to defeat the state's attempts to deport them.
Some go on to re-offend. Foreigners who avoided deportation committed 10,000 crimes in Britain in one year, 2021-22, according to Ministry of Justice data. That is 10,000 avoidable human rights abuses.
Why is it wrong to observe that membership of the ECHR collides with the right of people in the United Kingdom not to fall prey to foreign criminals who could otherwise have been expelled? Is placing membership of the ECHR above the safety of the British public not a 'pick and mix' approach, and a pretty reprehensible one?
Meanwhile, five European countries, including Finland and Poland, are withdrawing from the Ottawa Convention of 1997 which bans anti-personnel landmines. They believe they need these weapons to deter Russian invasion.
Are they vandalising the international system? Should Britain be campaigning against their decision?
I see no sign that we are. If our allies are allowed to leave a convention because it no longer serves their national interest, why can't we?
After all, the biggest catastrophe for Finland and Poland would be a failure to deter Russian aggression. A smaller but still grave catastrophe here in Britain was 10,000 avoidable human rights abuses in one year, particularly if you happened to be one of the victims.
If you insist on remaining in every convention regardless of the consequences, isn't that more extreme and irresponsible than exercising the legal right to leave? Will you not open the way for politicians who might respond 'stay in the conventions, but just ignore them'.
Lord Hermer might be trying to re-brand himself as a moderate, but by placing membership of international conventions beyond question, he endangers what he wishes to preserve.
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