Why the knives are coming out for government bogeyman Lord Hermer

Telegraph

3 days ago

Within hours of entering No 10, Sir Keir Starmer made an important decision. All but one of the shadow cabinet would retain the briefs they had held in opposition. The exception? Richard Hermer, the Prime Minister's long-time friend. Starmer handed him a peerage, the post of Attorney General and a brief to restore Britain's reputation abroad. Yet 12 months on, there are few appointments that have caused more controversy. Disdained on the Right as a bogeyman and increasingly disliked on the Left, his pronouncements leave many of his Labour colleagues cold.
Hermer's arrival in Whitehall was greeted with a chorus of delight by his old chums in the field of human rights. Gushing tributes were reported in the liberal press. 'A career that has never been distracted by politics,' remarked Geoffrey Robertson KC, the founder of Hermer's old Doughty Street chambers (once Starmer's stomping grounds too). At the time, this political virginity was seen by some within Downing Street as a positive. Hermer was the first incumbent since 1922 not to have served in Parliament before his appointment. But now there is a growing sense his lack of nous is being regarded within the highest levels of government as a problem.
His latest controversy has been to hand himself an effective 'veto' across swathes of Starmer's agenda. One of Hermer's first acts in office was to revise the Attorney General's guidance on legal risk to government lawyers. This edict assumes that every decision made by a minister will be subject to a legal challenge. Some 23 references to 'international law' were inserted, as was a new 'snitch clause', telling officials to inform him if ministers may be about to break the law. It follows his declaration at the European Court in Strasbourg that he would 'never' refuse to comply with judgments handed down there.
The consequences for domestic policymaking are obvious. Ministers, including those in cabinet, accuse Hermer's changes of slowing down a slew of policy across government. This includes the Border Security Bill and the ' Hillsborough Law ' to establish a duty of candour for public officials. The former is necessary to deal with the Channel crossings emergency; the latter is a touchstone issue for some northern MPs. Lord Maurice Glasman, the founder of Blue Labour, spoke for others when he called Hermer 'an arrogant, progressive fool who thinks that law is a replacement for politics'.
In foreign affairs, the Attorney General's influence is obvious too. His advice was cited in the decisions to hand sovereignty over the Chagos Islands to Mauritius and suspend certain arms sales to Israel. More recently, there was America's bombing of Iran, when Hermer reportedly warned that any UK involvement beyond defensive support would be illegal. That has infuriated some within the world of military and diplomatic affairs, who argue that their hands are being tied by a lawyer who does not appreciate the need for maximum flexibility in responding to rapidly moving events overseas.
Having antagonised his colleagues privately, Hermer's public pronouncements are causing concern, too. Speaking to the Rusi think tank at the end of May, the Attorney General compared calls to quit the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR) with the early days of Nazi Germany. He swiftly apologised, but the damage was done.
Part of Hermer's problem is institutional. Ensconced in the rarefied atmosphere of the House of Lords, he is shielded from the noise and drama of the Commons. Against David Wolfson, the genteel Tory spokesman in the Lords, Hermer has held his own. But down the corridor, Robert Jenrick – the heat-seeking missile of the Tory frontbench – is determined to take him down. The Shadow Justice Secretary and his staff spend their days plotting the downfall of the man they call 'the Herminator'.
For Jenrick and others, Hermer is the living embodiment of judicial overreach. It was Margaret Thatcher who distinguished between the rule of law and rule by lawyers. Hermer seems, to many Tories, to exploit the veneer of the former to enable the expansion of the latter. After 14 years of frustration in government, there is an increasingly Cromwellian attitude to Hermer's constant evocation of international law.
He has featured prominently in Jenrick's prolific online content. One such video has images of the clients whom the Labour peer represented prior to entering government: Gerry Adams, Shamima Begum, five terrorists linked to al-Qaeda. It is a compelling critique which has some within the Labour party now asking if Hermer is causing more trouble than he is worth. Against this onslaught, the Attorney General has declined to come out swinging. He has given few interviews and rarely seeks to explain his past career and the work he is doing in office. 'He is so easy to attack,' boasts one Tory MP.
This frustrates his allies within government. They argue that Hermer is unfairly maligned for merely trying to follow his Prime Minister's instructions. The Rusi speech, which attracted such opprobrium, is believed to have been cleared by No 10 in the usual way.
Dominic Cummings and others have fulminated against the edicts of government lawyers for years; ministers have always resented colleagues who trample on their turf. Hermer is nothing new in these respects. One older MP argues that 'whomever was in that role, they'd be getting it in the neck', as a global migration crisis continues to test international law to breaking point.
Yet there persists a sense amongst those who have brushed up against Hermer that he is not being as helpful as he could be. 'A blocker, not a builder' is the judgement of one aide. Another asks, despairingly: 'Does he have any instinct of self-preservation?'
And for those in the Commons, fearful of re-election in four years' time, the perceived lordly attitude of Hermer and his team, indifferent to their electoral needs, is regarded as profoundly tone-deaf. In a party as tribal as Labour, there are doubts about whether he is truly one of the team. 'He's like Starmer,' says one former advisor. 'He has no politics, except the law. He is just not a Labour person.'
A gaggle of young MPs, like Dan Tomlinson, Jake Richards and Mike Tapp have now taken it on themselves to publicly call for reform of the ECHR and its overinterpreted protections on torture and family life. Hermer's allies insist that he is on board with this mission, pointing to his Rusi speech. Yet those in the pro-Reform camp argue that it is Shabana Mahmood, the Justice Secretary, who is driving this change, rather than Hermer and the Attorney General's Office.
Cut off from the Commons and lambasted in the press, Hermer's position looks to be an unhappy one.
Cynics wonder whether Starmer – or those around him – are content to keep using the Attorney General as a lightning rod, to absorb flack that would otherwise be directed at No 10. But the Prime Minister has shown a willingness before to protect his allies, like Ed Miliband, who helped get him selected for his safe seat in 2015. The Energy Secretary had been widely tipped for the sack before – but is now thriving as of the big winners of the recent Spending Review. Starmer and Hermer are genuine friends; the former even gave the latter's toast when he took silk in 2009.
Yet unlike Miliband, with his legions of eco-friendly backbenchers, Hermer lacks a power base. 'International lawyers don't have many votes,' jokes one within Labour. Isolated and attacked, after a difficult first year in office, the knives are out for Lord Hermer as he prepares for the travails of the next 12 months. Not all his colleagues think he will last the course.