A few years ago during an interview and was asked; if given power, which one law would he choose to enact?
'The European Union (Please Can We Come Back?) Act 2020,' was his reply.
He and Sir Keir go way back. They met as barristers at the fashionable Left-wing chambers Doughty Street, where Hermer was the future PM's junior on a string of 'human rights' cases.
When Hermer became a QC, in 2009, Sir Keir gave the speech at the drinks reception. And in 2019, when he stood for the Labour leadership, Hermer gave £5,000 to his campaign funds.
Take the controversy that erupted this week when it emerged that Gerry Adams, the former leader of Sinn Fein, is in line for a taxpayer-funded compensation after the Starmer administration decided to repeal a law that has blocked him from claiming damages for being interned in the 1970s.
Awkwardly, the same Gerry Adams just happens to have been a recent client of Lord Hermer, who represented him in November 2023, when he was sued by victims of the IRA. At a High Court hearing, Lord Hermer had argued that parts of the case ought to be struck out on the grounds of 'procedural breaches and irregularities', along with the contention that the Provisional IRA was an 'unincorporated association' which was 'incapable in law of being sued'. Lord Hermer earned a reported £30,000 representing Mr Adams. Now, just over a year later, he's Attorney General in a Government which has taken a highly contentious decision likely to materially benefit the Sinn Fein grandee. And appearing before MPs this week, Lord Hermer also refused to say whether he'd advised Sir Keir on the matter, saying he 'can't remember'.
Consider the ongoing ructions over the future of the Chagos Islands, a British sovereign territory which Sir Keir is seeking to hand over to Mauritius, a country 1,300 miles away which counts itself as one of China's strategic allies.
The deal is likely to cost UK taxpayers about £9 billion and Lord Hermer's paw prints are all over it. Not least given his personal view (recently expressed on his Matrix Chambers podcast) that 'one can't begin to understand the British colonial project without appreciation for how racism impacted almost every element of it'. In a speech last October, the Attorney General defended it as 'honouring our obligations under international law,' suggesting that Britain somehow has an 'obligation' to surrender the island – even though critics point out that an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice on the matter was not legally binding. Awkwardly, one group which now stands to benefit from the whole thing are his old mates at Matrix Chambers, who just so happen to have been representing the Mauritians. Their founder Phillipe Sands KC, who is heavily involved in the matter, has dubbed Britain's decision to cede the islands 'a special day for Mauritius, for Chagossians, for international law'. Sands is at the centre of what one might call a 'Starmerian nexus'. He's a close personal friend of Sir Keir (they watch Arsenal together) and a longstanding chum of Lord Hermer, whose name has over the years appeared alongside his on a string of public letters making Left-leaning contributions to a string of topical debates.
After July's Southport riots, which were sparked by the fatal stabbing of three girls at a holiday club, he advised the Government that it would be lawful to charge social media users with stirring up racial hatred, resulting in some contentious prison sentences.
Meanwhile in October, it emerged that Lord Hermer had intervened after the Metropolitan police refused to provide the singer Taylor Swift with an escort to Wembley Stadium, where she was playing a series of concerts attended by VIPs. He told the force that providing the escort would be legal. At least five Cabinet Ministers, including the Prime Minister, had been given free tickets to the gigs.
Then there is the case of Shamima Begum, the schoolgirl who left the UK in 2015 to join Isis in Syria but has been trying for several years to return to the UK. Lord Hermer acted for her at the Supreme Court in 2020, arguing that she faces 'unfairness upon unfairness' in her battle to have her citizenship restored. 'She is no longer entitled to be protected by the state, and risks exposure to irregular treatment, such as being targeted by drone strikes, the consequences of which may be fatal,' he said.
In 2019, he was the chosen barrister of pressure group Liberty, which took Boris Johnson to court in an effort to prevent him breaching the Benn Act, a piece of legislation designed by Sir Keir's Northern Ireland Secretary Hilary Benn, which required the PM to delay Britain's departure from the EU if he couldn't reach an exit deal by a certain date.
And in 2021, he represented a group of MPs who went to the High Court seeking to force the Johnson government to order a public inquiry into claims that Russia interfered in the 2016 Brexit referendum.
After eschewing radical politics for the law – to the relief, he once said, of his parents Ian and Judith – he was called to the bar in 1993 and moved to London to work at Doughty Street, the human rights chambers Sir Keir had helped set up in the early 1990s, which then prospered under the Blair government.
He and his wife Caren Gestetner, a former solicitor at Mishcon de Reya who left to study 'gender, policy and inequalities' at LSE (and now runs a charity which carries out 'gender audits' of primary schools designed to combat sexism), attend a synagogue in north-west London.
In 2023, he advised Labour to oppose a bill by Michael Gove designed to prevent public bodies from boycotting Israel, saying it would have 'a profoundly detrimental impact on the UK's ability to protect and promote human rights overseas'.
Then came that public letter following the October 7 attacks, in which he and other signatories stated: 'The Israeli government is led by a coalition of far-Right parties whose common goal is the formal annexation of the West Bank and the extension of a one-state reality of unequal rights over more than five million Palestinians under occupation.'
"giving him the authority to block certain prosecutions"
This shouldn't even be a power. No 'Attorney General' should have the power to interfere with and block the process of justice. It basically makes him de facto judge, with no jury, a tyrant who can let off criminals scot free. If a prosecution was already proceeding, it means both the police and the Crown Prosecution Service (full of able-bodied prosecutors) had already deemed an individual to have broken a law with sufficient evidence to prosecute; they don't need some tyrant AG telling them 'actually, no, you can't prosecute this criminal'.
Strip him of that power. He's unelected. If you want to invent the concept of pardons, delegate that to a directly elected body that runs independent of government cronyism. Giving it over to one man is asking for personal abuse of power.
The British authorities no longer seem to care that we can all see the corruption and cronyism. I guess that's because there appears to be nothing the public can do to make any difference. Especially now that the police and the judiciary are in the pocket of the corrupt. A third world banana republic is what we now are. How depressing.
people be sure to checkout a petition on the uk government and parliament petition page... shut the migrant hotels down now and deport illegal migrants housed there..it currently has 59,037, signatures it needs a minimum of 100,000 signatures to be debated in parliament..be aware it should by now have many more signatures and the reason it doesnt is apathy...peoples mindset is very clear to understand it goes like this petitions are a waste of time and achieve nothing..however what they wont admit to is the fact its there own apathy that truly will achieve nothing FACT to me this is blatant hypocrisy.....anyway back to the petition as for resharing it be very aware that e mails cant be censored or suppressed fact but shh your not supposed to know that....so the plan is this first be sure to sign it and then by using e mails only be sure to reshare it with all your like minded uk only e mail contacts and be sure to ask each one of them to do exactly the same as im asking you in this message and be sure to tell each one of them that when they reshare it they must only use e mails and tell them why
A few years ago during an interview and was asked; if given power, which one law would he choose to enact?
'The European Union (Please Can We Come Back?) Act 2020,' was his reply.
He and Sir Keir go way back. They met as barristers at the fashionable Left-wing chambers Doughty Street, where Hermer was the future PM's junior on a string of 'human rights' cases.
When Hermer became a QC, in 2009, Sir Keir gave the speech at the drinks reception. And in 2019, when he stood for the Labour leadership, Hermer gave £5,000 to his campaign funds.
Take the controversy that erupted this week when it emerged that Gerry Adams, the former leader of Sinn Fein, is in line for a taxpayer-funded compensation after the Starmer administration decided to repeal a law that has blocked him from claiming damages for being interned in the 1970s.
Awkwardly, the same Gerry Adams just happens to have been a recent client of Lord Hermer, who represented him in November 2023, when he was sued by victims of the IRA. At a High Court hearing, Lord Hermer had argued that parts of the case ought to be struck out on the grounds of 'procedural breaches and irregularities', along with the contention that the Provisional IRA was an 'unincorporated association' which was 'incapable in law of being sued'. Lord Hermer earned a reported £30,000 representing Mr Adams. Now, just over a year later, he's Attorney General in a Government which has taken a highly contentious decision likely to materially benefit the Sinn Fein grandee. And appearing before MPs this week, Lord Hermer also refused to say whether he'd advised Sir Keir on the matter, saying he 'can't remember'.
Consider the ongoing ructions over the future of the Chagos Islands, a British sovereign territory which Sir Keir is seeking to hand over to Mauritius, a country 1,300 miles away which counts itself as one of China's strategic allies.
The deal is likely to cost UK taxpayers about £9 billion and Lord Hermer's paw prints are all over it. Not least given his personal view (recently expressed on his Matrix Chambers podcast) that 'one can't begin to understand the British colonial project without appreciation for how racism impacted almost every element of it'. In a speech last October, the Attorney General defended it as 'honouring our obligations under international law,' suggesting that Britain somehow has an 'obligation' to surrender the island – even though critics point out that an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice on the matter was not legally binding. Awkwardly, one group which now stands to benefit from the whole thing are his old mates at Matrix Chambers, who just so happen to have been representing the Mauritians. Their founder Phillipe Sands KC, who is heavily involved in the matter, has dubbed Britain's decision to cede the islands 'a special day for Mauritius, for Chagossians, for international law'. Sands is at the centre of what one might call a 'Starmerian nexus'. He's a close personal friend of Sir Keir (they watch Arsenal together) and a longstanding chum of Lord Hermer, whose name has over the years appeared alongside his on a string of public letters making Left-leaning contributions to a string of topical debates.
After July's Southport riots, which were sparked by the fatal stabbing of three girls at a holiday club, he advised the Government that it would be lawful to charge social media users with stirring up racial hatred, resulting in some contentious prison sentences.
Meanwhile in October, it emerged that Lord Hermer had intervened after the Metropolitan police refused to provide the singer Taylor Swift with an escort to Wembley Stadium, where she was playing a series of concerts attended by VIPs. He told the force that providing the escort would be legal. At least five Cabinet Ministers, including the Prime Minister, had been given free tickets to the gigs.
Then there is the case of Shamima Begum, the schoolgirl who left the UK in 2015 to join Isis in Syria but has been trying for several years to return to the UK. Lord Hermer acted for her at the Supreme Court in 2020, arguing that she faces 'unfairness upon unfairness' in her battle to have her citizenship restored. 'She is no longer entitled to be protected by the state, and risks exposure to irregular treatment, such as being targeted by drone strikes, the consequences of which may be fatal,' he said.
In 2019, he was the chosen barrister of pressure group Liberty, which took Boris Johnson to court in an effort to prevent him breaching the Benn Act, a piece of legislation designed by Sir Keir's Northern Ireland Secretary Hilary Benn, which required the PM to delay Britain's departure from the EU if he couldn't reach an exit deal by a certain date.
And in 2021, he represented a group of MPs who went to the High Court seeking to force the Johnson government to order a public inquiry into claims that Russia interfered in the 2016 Brexit referendum.
After eschewing radical politics for the law – to the relief, he once said, of his parents Ian and Judith – he was called to the bar in 1993 and moved to London to work at Doughty Street, the human rights chambers Sir Keir had helped set up in the early 1990s, which then prospered under the Blair government.
He and his wife Caren Gestetner, a former solicitor at Mishcon de Reya who left to study 'gender, policy and inequalities' at LSE (and now runs a charity which carries out 'gender audits' of primary schools designed to combat sexism), attend a synagogue in north-west London.
In 2023, he advised Labour to oppose a bill by Michael Gove designed to prevent public bodies from boycotting Israel, saying it would have 'a profoundly detrimental impact on the UK's ability to protect and promote human rights overseas'.
Then came that public letter following the October 7 attacks, in which he and other signatories stated: 'The Israeli government is led by a coalition of far-Right parties whose common goal is the formal annexation of the West Bank and the extension of a one-state reality of unequal rights over more than five million Palestinians under occupation.'
This man is despicable
"giving him the authority to block certain prosecutions"
This shouldn't even be a power. No 'Attorney General' should have the power to interfere with and block the process of justice. It basically makes him de facto judge, with no jury, a tyrant who can let off criminals scot free. If a prosecution was already proceeding, it means both the police and the Crown Prosecution Service (full of able-bodied prosecutors) had already deemed an individual to have broken a law with sufficient evidence to prosecute; they don't need some tyrant AG telling them 'actually, no, you can't prosecute this criminal'.
Strip him of that power. He's unelected. If you want to invent the concept of pardons, delegate that to a directly elected body that runs independent of government cronyism. Giving it over to one man is asking for personal abuse of power.
The British authorities no longer seem to care that we can all see the corruption and cronyism. I guess that's because there appears to be nothing the public can do to make any difference. Especially now that the police and the judiciary are in the pocket of the corrupt. A third world banana republic is what we now are. How depressing.
Critical thinking MSM has long gone
people be sure to checkout a petition on the uk government and parliament petition page... shut the migrant hotels down now and deport illegal migrants housed there..it currently has 59,037, signatures it needs a minimum of 100,000 signatures to be debated in parliament..be aware it should by now have many more signatures and the reason it doesnt is apathy...peoples mindset is very clear to understand it goes like this petitions are a waste of time and achieve nothing..however what they wont admit to is the fact its there own apathy that truly will achieve nothing FACT to me this is blatant hypocrisy.....anyway back to the petition as for resharing it be very aware that e mails cant be censored or suppressed fact but shh your not supposed to know that....so the plan is this first be sure to sign it and then by using e mails only be sure to reshare it with all your like minded uk only e mail contacts and be sure to ask each one of them to do exactly the same as im asking you in this message and be sure to tell each one of them that when they reshare it they must only use e mails and tell them why
You probably need to be a bit more specific. These are currently the two most popular petitions:
Raise the income tax personal allowance from £12,570 to £20,000
265,987 signatures
Ban immediately the use of dogs in scientific and regulatory procedures
241,407 signatures
ok see above