3 days ago
Lord Hermer's ‘Nazi jibe' shows his naivety
Amid talk of a summer reshuffle, I recently asked a senior member of the Labour party if he thought the Attorney-General was likely for the chop. He paused and reflected. 'No', he eventually replied. 'But he's going the right way about it.' Similar sentiments will no doubt be expressed in Downing Street today as they pore over the morning papers. 'Law chief in Nazi jibe at Tories and Reform', screams the splash headline of today's Times: Richard Hermer KC has done it again.
The cause of the headline is a speech which Hermer made to the RUSI think tank yesterday on the government's commitment to international law. The Labour peer made a thoughtful, lucid speech critiquing Bismarckian notions of realpolitik and offering a reasoned defence of the rules-based order – including Britain's commitment to the European Court of Human Rights. But one section of the speech leaps out from the page:
