Lord Hermer was responsible for many of the last government’s most destructive policies - the Tory MP writes
Despite his best efforts to present himself as a fresh face, Andy Burnham’s new cabinet is largely stuffed full of the same Labour ministers who’ve done such damage over the past two years.
But one of the few silver linings of this mess is that Richard Hermer has been booted out of the Attorney-General’s office.
As Keir Starmer’s most senior legal adviser, Lord Hermer was responsible for many of the last government’s most destructive policies.
Lord Hermer was a human rights lawyer by trade and a close friend of Keir Starmer.
During his professional career, he represented a rogue’s gallery of anti-British figures.
These include Rangzieb Ahmed, a convicted terrorist who worked with al-Qaeda and former Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams.
And while lawyers often don’t necessarily agree with their clients, it’s remarkable how much of his work on behalf of figures like these was carried out ‘pro bono’ – in other words, free of charge.
The most disgraceful episode of all was Lord Hermer’s involvement with convicted fraudster Phil Shiner, who sought to drag British soldiers through the courts over false allegations of war crimes.
By his own admission, Lord Hermer was “substantially involved” in that case; in fact, he spent a decade providing advice.
Often, he was the figure encouraging Shiner to “up the ante”, regardless of the truth of the allegations – in a 2008 email, he emphasised the importance of “getting the balance right between making sure that the big story is out there whilst giving us some wriggle room if the killings did not, in fact, happen”.
This is the man that Keir Starmer decided to appoint as his most senior legal adviser.
And unsurprisingly, his political work carried on in the same tone as his professional work.
Again and again, he put his ideological obsession with a particular interpretation of the law ahead of the interests of the British people.
Lord Hermer was one of the main architects of the Chagos handover, which would have seen us spend billions of pounds of taxpayer money for the privilege of handing away British territory.
He was also one of the most vocal defenders of the European Convention on Human Rights, the treaty which makes it so difficult for us to deport foreign criminals.
Last year, he even compared those who want Britain to leave the ECHR to Carl Schmitt, a Nazi legal theorist.
But his involvement with the Government’s disastrous Troubles Bill is perhaps his most shameful legacy.
That bill would reopen the door to lawfare against British veterans who served in Northern Ireland, decades after the fact, and on the basis of no new evidence.
It’s a disgraceful betrayal of those who’ve put themselves at risk so that the rest of us can live our lives in peace.
Fortunately, Lord Hermer’s sacking (and that of Hilary Benn as Northern Ireland Secretary) presents the Government with an opportunity to drop their Troubles Bill and to allow our veterans to live free of legal harassment.
When Parliament returns, the new Attorney-General, Ellie Reeves, and the new Northern Ireland Secretary, Chris Bryant, will have a choice.
They can drop the Troubles Bill, and leave our veterans in peace – or they can continue to push Hermer’s mad ideological project.
