The PM has a doctrine — but it’s delusional
A mystery pervades the Palace of Westminster — and, to the extent that it cares, perplexes the country as a whole. What does the prime minister really believe in? What are his irreducible principles? He became leader of his party by swearing his friendship and political affiliation with Jeremy Corbyn, and then remorselessly discarded all the policy “pledges” which had accompanied that impersonation. In government Starmer has executed so many sharp U-turns, he might be known as the Great Tergiversator.
Nevertheless, there is something that consistently animates Sir Keir, so much so that he wrote a 938-page book on the topic: European human rights law. Or, as he expressed it to his biographer, Tom Baldwin: “There is no version of my life that does not largely revolve around me being a human rights lawyer.” As it happens, the matter of our membership of the European Court of Human Rights is no longer a question of some obscurity but at the centre of political debate and policy-making. It’s not just to do with the furore over those whose resistance to deportation often rests on the power of the ECHR’s protection for “family life”.
In 2024 there was the remarkable case Verein KlimaSeniorinnen Schweiz and others v Switzerland, in which a group of Swiss female pensioners succeeded in persuading the ECHR judges that over decades their country’s laws had failed to protect them adequately “from the serious adverse effects of climate change on lives, health, wellbeing and quality of life”.
Essentially, the court ordered the Swiss government to sharpen up its climate change legislation and even consider reparations.
It was an astonishing attack on the sovereignty of what is probably the world’s most democratic nation. As the English representative on the ECHR, Tim Eicke, indicated in dissent, this judgment went “well beyond the permissible limits of interpretation of the ECHR as a matter of international law”.
The thing is, what is called “international law” has, like all supranational courts, a tendency to assign itself new territory. Yet Starmer has put our entire system of government at its disposal.
This is at the heart of two matters of increasing political salience: the payment of billions of pounds to Mauritius while handing over to it the colonially acquired Chagos islands, previously known as the British Indian Ocean Territory; and the cancelling of the last Conservative government’s legacy act, which protected aged former British servicemen from the possibility of endless legal pursuit over their conduct in Northern Ireland during the Troubles. In both cases the Starmer administration cited compliance with international law as justification, as if that were the sole principle at stake. In the matter of Chagos, it is based on an “advisory opinion” — which is not binding — from the International Court of Justice. In the matter of the now abandoned former servicemen, the Starmer government acted on advice that the European Court of Human Rights would find the legacy act had breached two of its articles.
Labour’s Northern Ireland veterans commissioner, David Johnstone, has declared that his own government’s decision is treating these old soldiers “worse than terrorists”. They survived what amounted to warfare but may not be so fortunate against lawfare.
The figure at the centre of this — apart from Starmer himself — is Lord Hermer. Richard Hermer KC was appointed by the PM as attorney general, the first in that position for more than a century not to have been in parliament beforehand. He and Starmer are the closest of friends and former colleagues; Hermer joined the progressive chambers of which Starmer had been a founder and they often worked on the same cases (although only Hermer acted for Gerry Adams). Later Hermer made a personal subscription of £5,000 to Starmer’s leadership campaign.
Once in office, Hermer characteristically amended the government’s code of advice regarding what are described as “high legal risk policies”. Westminster’s leading think tank, Policy Exchange, revealed: “Whereas the 2015 and 2022 versions of the guidance each mention international law once, the 2024 version mentions international law a staggering 24 times.” As the Oxford professor of law and constitutional government, Richard Ekins, noted: “International law ... is not, simply, as Hermer sometimes seems to think, national law writ large. [It] is often animated by political considerations and lacks effective means of enforcement.”
Sir Keir’s friend Lord Hermer is at the heart of this
The argument always put by Hermer and Starmer is that “international law” is the surest bulwark against our enemies. It is the battlefield on which they are most qualified to fight. But in the raw world where real wars are fought, the carapace of international law is no protection. Yet our government has actually sought to persuade countries bordering a revanchist Russia not to withdraw from the Ottawa treaty, which banned anti-personnel landmines, and the 2008 convention that banned cluster munitions. Obviously Russia is not a signatory; neither is the US or China. Yet when Lithuania said it would withdraw from the treaty to join Finland, Estonia and Latvia, which shrewdly never signed up, a Labour Foreign Office minister in the Lords, Baroness Chapman of Darlington (formerly Starmer’s political secretary), voiced strong disapproval: “The UK regrets Lithuania’s decision [and] has frequently raised concerns with Lithuania regarding withdrawal.” When I reported this to a former British ambassador to Latvia, Ian Bond, he groaned and described it as “nuts”.
For all his narcissism, venality and idiocy, President Trump at least serves to demonstrate that soft power (on which British ministers rest their moral superiority) has a sharply falling export value. Yet even after last week’s events the delusion persists at the heart of the Starmer administration. On Friday the justice secretary, David Lammy, told the BBC’s Nick Robinson that Trump’s abrupt change of approach on Greenland was a “consequence” of the UK making “crystal clear” its opinion on the need to respect “international law”.
The idea Trump’s retreat from his threat of invading Greenland was in the slightest degree a result of a Starmer lecture on the importance of “international law” is hilarious even by Lammy’s standards. Trump backed down because US polls had immediately shown that even the great majority of Republican voters were opposed to seizing Greenland; the stock market’s plunge made the same point in the language of money (Trump’s native tongue); and US generals indicated they would resign rather than obey such an unconstitutional order from their commander-in-chief.
The fact that our deputy PM doesn’t see this tells you a lot about the delusional nature of Keir Starmer’s government.
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