In the reign of Richard II, 1377-1399, people complained that there were too many lawyers in the House of Commons, and this is a complaint that has not gone away. Sir Keir Starmer is seen as leading a government of lawyers, with Lord Hermer, the Attorney General, as his lead henchman.
Yet this has not stopped them attacking Lord Wolfson of Tredegar, the Shadow Attorney General, for being part of the legal team for Putin crony Roman Abramovich. This begs the question of how fair it is to criticise lawyers for their clients. Along with many Conservative and Reform supporters, I have not hesitated to criticise both Starmer and Hermer for being human rights lawyers. It may, therefore, seem hypocritical to defend one of the best commercial lawyers in the country for assisting a Putin acolyte, but the two cases are different.
As I know and admire Lord Wolfson and view him as a friend, I am naturally biased in his favour. But there is also an important distinction to be made between ensuring that bad people are entitled to good legal representation, and changing the way the state is governed to move power from politicians to judges. This is the difference between the two complaints.
Lord Wolfson of Tredegar, as the Shadow Attorney General, is automatically in a different position from the Attorney General. Shadow posts are voluntary and unpaid, and the shadow Attorney General does not represent the government in court, nor is his legal advice binding across the government. Inevitably, this means that the conflicts of interest that could arise are of an entirely different order of magnitude. More fundamentally, Wolfson is operating within the current, and in my view successful, constitutional framework.
However, Starmer and Hermer seek to overturn this framework and replace it with a judge-led settlement. They are in favour of human rights law as an idea, which is a fundamental attack on the British Constitution. It seeks to change the time-honoured system that depends, for its legitimacy, on the King in Parliament, to one where that body is restricted by an unaccountable and immutable higher law of human rights. Further, this law may be determined only by judges, is not subject to democratic oversight or amendment, and is not even the sovereign decision of the nation, but may, and in Starmer’s view should, be imposed by a foreign court upon the British people and other nations.
