Key topics
- Starmer is seen as a manager rather than a visionary leader.
- His legal principles clash with his political ambitions.
- His attorney general’s past and policies create political tensions.
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By Martin Ivens ___STEADY_PAYWALL___
What makes Keir Starmer tick? According to Get In, a new biography of the UK prime minister by Patrick Maguire and Gabriel Pogrund, his inner circle unflatteringly describe him as a “HR manager.” No disrespect to this vital corporate function, but leading a country demands a different skill set. Another helpful No. 10 staffer compares Starmer to a passenger sitting at the front of one of London’s driverless light railway trains, imagining they’re actually operating it; at one point, the book cites Starmer as telling a trade union leader, “I don’t have any ideology at all.”
That’s not the full story. The PM’s commitment to the European Court of Human Rights and international law runs deep; when he became director of public prosecutions, Starmer came to understand the claims of the state as well as those of the individual citizen. In his first week in office, however, he unexpectedly picked Richard Hermer, a fellow human rights lawyer and friend, to be attorney general — the government’s legal counsel who helps gets its business done, but also the keeper of its conscience. Raised to high office and granted a peerage, Hermer’s human rights activism is already having ramifications for government policy.
The issue is that Starmer’s legal principles and his ambition to enjoy two terms in office are seriously out of kilter. A completely unnecessary row has arisen over a front-loaded £9 billion ($11 billion) payment to Mauritius for the lease of the Chagos Islands, a British Indian Ocean territory used as a US naval base. The government’s lawyers have contrived to make Starmer look both profligate with the public purse and unpatriotic; they’ve also sparked a potential row with the US, with the Trump administration now considering the terms of the agreement for approval or humiliating rejection.
Read more: 🔒 ‘Restless’ Keir Starmer and his new Labour cabinet
Hermer’s former client list, alas, reads like a Tory “Wanted” crime poster. He represented Gerry Adams, the former leader of Sinn Fein, when its ties to the terrorist Irish Republican Army were umbilical, and Shamima Begum, who joined Islamic State as a teenager and has since sought to return to the UK from captivity in northern Syria. Before taking office, Hermer also told a podcast that pledges to “control our borders” are “dehumanizing” — an opinion that goes down badly in the opinion polls. To put it mildly, this isn’t a helpful tone to a government claiming to have no ideology.
As William Faulkner observed, what’s past is not even past. Due to a change in the Legacy Act, Adams stands to be awarded financial compensation for his detention by the authorities at the height of Northern Ireland’s troubles; Hermer won’t reveal whether he gave legal advice that suggested the amendment. In the ensuing uproar, Starmer said he would try “every conceivable way” to stop payment, though it was his government that made it possible. The fine details don’t interest British voters; but nudged by the nationalist right, they do remember the IRA’s bombing campaign.
One of Hermer’s first acts was to modify the attorney general’s guidance on legal risk. Ministers weren’t being informed that policy was often “highly likely to be unlawful,” and therefore likely to be outlawed by the courts, including in overseas jurisdictions. Don’t take a risk, was the new message. This, it is alleged, has already led to a freeze on much government activity. Attorneys general typically facilitate business, rather than stymie it.
That’s the least of it. Starmer’s government is making a laudable attempt to loosen up the UK’s rigid planning regime in order to modernize the country’s creaking infrastructure and kick-start growth. This month, Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves announced a series of ambitious projects to get new airport runways, reservoirs, railways and tunnels built.
Many of these projects were advanced by earlier British governments too. Most of them were subject to legal challenge by NIMBYs — Sadiq Khan, the Labour mayor of London, resorted to the courts to stop a third runway being built at Heathrow Airport and has threatened to do so again. Environmentalist protesters waged guerilla warfare against such developments and sometimes achieved their aims.
Starmer is underestimated by his critics, perhaps by his biographers too. He’s more than just a liberal north London lawyer — his principles are tempered by experience and he learns from his mistakes. The PM has been faithful to existing relationships outside Westminster, while ruthlessly ditching political associates once they’ve served their purpose. Hermer is a hybrid — both an old friend and a current political ally.
The attorney general’s role will eventually take center stage. The omens aren’t propitious. In May 2023, Hermer said the Just Stop Oil group’s illegal disruptive protests were “inspiring.” Three months later, Starmer, then leader of the opposition, called their actions “contemptible.” Whose view will prevail if and when the bulldozers go in? Starmer’s views about the balance between the needs of the state and the rights of individuals will soon test his relationship with his chief lawyer.
Read also:
- 🔒 FT: Keir Starmer hails historic Labour victory as Conservatives sink to worst-ever result
- 🔒 Keir Starmer’s character is as Elusive as his policies: Martin Ivens
- Keir Starmer’s early test: Far-right violence in UK surges after Southport attack – Martin Ivens
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