The UK’s Attorney General has been criticised after suggesting the roots of current calls for the UK to leave international courts can be linked to arguments advanced in early 1930s Germany.
In a speech made to the Royal United Services Institute (Rusi) think tank, Lord Richard Hermer KC, who is himself Jewish, said:“This is not a new song.
“The claim that international law is fine as far as it goes, but can be put aside when conditions change, is a claim that was made in the early 1930s by ‘realist’ jurists in Germany, most notably Carl Schmitt, whose central thesis was in essence the claim that state power is all that counts, not law.”
He added the current UK government’s approach suggested the Government’s approach is a “rejection of the siren song” that can be “heard in the Palace of Westminster” in which “Britain abandons the constraints of international law in favour of raw power”.
Lord Hermer then also said that because of what happened “in 1933, far-sighted individuals rebuilt and transformed the institutions of international law”.
Schmitt was a vocal critic of parliamentary democracy, and joined the Nazi party in 1933, the year Adolf Hitler became German chancellor.
The European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) was subsequently created in 1950 after the Second World War, and is intended to protect human rights, enforce the rule of law and promote democracy.
Reports of his speech included a headline in the Telegraph newpaperr suggesting Hermer had compared current calls to leave the ECHR with the “rise of Nazism.”
Richard Tice MP, deputy leader of Reform UK, shared the headline on X adding:”Lord Hermer should apologise.
“If anyone on the right of politics used his language there would be outrage He has shown himself as unfit to be Attorney General.”
Shadow attorney general David Wolfson added:”A good analogy improves your argument. A bad one undermines it.”
But a source close to Hermer said: “The attorney-general sees those on the other side of this debate as patriots acting in good faith — but deeply misguided because ripping up international law will only help those who want a lawless world like Vladimir Putin.
“He is the son of a former Conservative councillor, who sees this as nothing but a good-faith argument in the British family.”
Education Minister Catherine McKinnell also said Hermer’s speech had been “quite thoughtful”.
And she backed the link between quitting the ECHR and dictators, telling Times Radio om Friday: “Any discussion around withdrawing from the international stage just supports people and the agenda of people like [Vladimir] Putin.”
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has stopped short of calling for the UK to leave the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), as other Conservative figures have advocated.
However, she suggested the UK would have to leave the convention if it stops the country from doing “what is right”.
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has said he would get rid of the ECHR, and told ITV in April that “we have to get back the ability to decide, can we really control our borders”.
In his same speech to Rusi on Thursday, the Attorney General said “we must not stagnate in our approach to international rules” and that officials should “look to apply and adapt existing obligations to address new situations”.
“We must be ready to reform where necessary,” he added.
“States agreeing to treaties some time ago did not give an open-ended licence for international rules to be ever more expansively interpreted or for institutions to adopt a position of blindness or indifference to public sentiment,” he said.
