In a competitive field the Attorney General, Lord Hermer, is the biggest ministerial villain for the right-wing newspapers. Rarely a day passes without the Telegraph, Mail and others screaming about what they see as Hermer’s hyper-active interventions within government. Hermer dares to warn ministers that they must act within domestic and international law and his critics fume. “The least patriotic man EVER to hold high office?” asked former professor turned Reform mouthpiece Matt Goodwin in the Mail over the weekend.
None of the media noise would matter that much but for two additional factors. Some anonymous government insiders are quoted regularly echoing the views of the newspapers in their political pages. How can we be insurgent incumbents, they ask with apparently defiant machismo, when Hermer is forever warning us that we cannot do what we need to do to beat Nigel Farage?
Inevitably the rise of Reform is the other factor triggering insider briefings. Farage has never been a great upholder of international law if it gets in the way of “Britain’s interests”. A big part of his pitch is his conviction that Britain must leave the ECHR. Like Keir Starmer, Hermer is a world expert on international law, including the ECHR. Apparently No 10’s self-described “insurgent incumbents” are deeply frustrated. Whenever there is speculation about a cabinet reshuffle Hermer’s name is cited as one who could or should be sacked.
Such an outcome would be calamitous for Starmer and his government, not least because Hermer is an “insurgent incumbent” as far as that latest, fashionably imprecise term has any meaning at all. He has the confidence and authority to challenge current orthodoxies that have dominated the British media and political culture since Brexit, including an assumption that breaking international law is to be celebrated because it is in Britain’s self interest to do so. This is now a mainstream view in parts of the Conservative Party, Reform, as well as the newspapers. The new orthodoxies shaped Boris Johnson’s Rwanda policy, a scheme that the courts found violated both international and domestic law.
A recent message from Hermer to the government’s law officers triggered another outrage in some newspapers partly because he declared: “You have a key role in helping ministers meet their overarching [legal] obligation while delivering their policy objectives.” What did they expect the Attorney General to state, that they should urge ministers to ignore the legal obligations? It remains staggering that to assert the centrality of the law stirs raging controversy: “An Attorney General warns ministers of legal obligations… He should be sacked!”
Revealingly, those forces touched in some form or other by Hermer’s interventions do not share the angry disdain. Senior Tory and Reform figures predicted that all hell would break loose in the Trump administration over the Chagos Islands deal that partly arose from Hermer’s reading of Britain’s legal obligations. The opposite happened. Trump praised the arrangements.
Back in the UK, the Home Office has nothing but praise for Hermer. The Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, actively seeks his advice and willingly involves him in sensitive decisions. They do not complain that he is actively or naively obstructing policies they wish to pursue. On some highly charged issues, he shows flexibility. He supports the Justice Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, in her current efforts to reform the ECHR.
Some Labour MPs complain that Hermer is hopeless at politics – a failing that becomes more apparent when the Prime Minister struggles with the political demands of high office and the Chancellor realises she is not as skilled as she believed at the near-impossible art of blending politics and economics. But even that common observation doesn’t tell the whole story. I am told that Hermer spends more time in the Westminster tea rooms engaging with backbenchers than most Cabinet ministers. Although he is rarely allowed out to do broadcast interviews he did give one recently to the BBC’s Henry Zeffman in which he navigated tricky themes with skill, countering the populist onslaughts with the accessible case for his faith in the law.
“No one wants to do deals with people they don’t trust. No one wants to sign international agreements with a country that’s got a government that’s saying, well, ‘We may comply with it, we may not’… We do. We succeed… Being a good faith player in international law is overwhelmingly in the national interests of this country.” That answer from Hermer forms the substantial case for keeping him in position. The willingness to break laws displayed by previous Tory administrations did not lead to boats being stopped or flights to Rwanda taking off. There was no evidence anywhere that lawbreaking helped the UK.
Starmer is ruthless enough to sack an old friend like Hermer. But doing so would raise significant questions about his own public identity and sense of self, far more than with other high-profile dismissals under his leadership. As power edged closer before last summer’s election, Starmer showed only limited interest in ministerial appointments. He was preoccupied with campaigning, well before Rishi Sunak announced the election date. Sue Gray played a larger role in many junior appointments, consulting with shadow cabinet members and their advisers on who should form the ministerial teams. But Hermer’s appointment was Starmer’s alone. He wanted him in that role. Those within government who brief against Hermer are, in effect, challenging Starmer’s judgment and worldview.
The Prime Minister’s public voice is often unclear. Is he the leader who warned that Britain risks becoming an “island of strangers,” or the one who later regretted saying so? Removing Hermer would suggest that Starmer had once again ceded power and key decisions to advisers who want him to be someone he is not. The symbolism would be stark.
But more than that, his government needs the incumbent insurgents to flourish. Ironically, some of the most distinctive change-makers – Hermer, Ed Miliband, Bridget Phillipson – are being briefed against by those who see themselves as the real insurgents. Yet their version of insurgency amounts to continuity with the recent past: support for Michael Gove’s secondary school reforms, alignment with Rishi Sunak’s caution on net zero, and a desire to emulate Johnson or Farage on international law. Labour’s manifesto was titled “Change”. It is time to move on from that past. Hermer is among those doing just that. Whatever happens in the reshuffle, the genuine incumbent insurgents should remain in place.
[See also: Are Unite and Labour heading for divorce?]
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