THE longer a political argument goes on, US lawyer Mike Godwin wrote back in 1990, the greater the probability that it will end with a comparison with the Nazis.
It is inevitable, in other words. If “Godwin’s Law”, as it has come to be termed, was true 35 years ago, it is even more so now.
International law has not prevented Russia from carrying out a series of atrocities, above Army experts at scene of Russian Skripal poisonings in Salisbury, 2018EPA
Attorney General Richard Hermer hit out at those who want to withdraw from the European Convention on Human RightsGetty
Attorney General Lord Hermer has become the latest to make the jibe, during a lecture at defence think-tank the Royal United Services Institute.
In it, he compared the arguments of those who want to withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) — which includes Reform UK and many Conservatives as well as ex-Supreme Court judge Lord Sumption — to those of Nazi lawyers who rejected international law.
To be fair to Hermer, he didn’t quite call Nigel Farage or Kemi Badenoch “Nazis”, but he did accuse them of naivety, suggesting that they would embolden dictators like Vladimir Putin.
Chemical warfare
Only human rights treaties, he asserts, stand between us and a return to fascism.
I don’t know what world Lord Hermer is living in, but Russia’s membership of the ECHR didn’t exactly stop Putin bumping off his enemies, invading Crimea and waging chemical warfare on the streets of Britain with the Skripal poisonings.
It was only when he attempted to annex the rest of Ukraine in 2022 by blasting its cities and sending in the tanks that the Council of Europe, which oversees the ECHR, finally had enough and suspended Russia’s membership.
At the time there were more than 17,000 cases pending against Russia before the European Court of Human Rights.
So much for the effectiveness of international law.
Meanwhile, as we have seen over and over again, the ECHR is being used by activist lawyers to frustrate the deportation of illegal migrants — serious criminals and terrorists among them.
If your child doesn’t like the chicken nuggets available back home in Albania, or if your conviction for sex offences against children will make you unpopular back in Iraq, deporting you is, apparently, a terrible breach of your human rights.
The “right to a family life” now seems to mean pretty well anything, including the right to run a criminal gang in Britain.
This is as far from the original intentions of the ECHR as could be imagined.
Those who drafted it in 1950 would be turning in their graves if they knew what it had become.
Hermer and Starmer are simply drunk on the concept of international law
The convention, as written then, contained relatively few clauses but ones on which most of humanity could agree, such as a prohibition against torture.
It didn’t even ban the death penalty.
Over the years, however, it has been expanded via various protocols, many of them highly political.
Activist judges have been able to interpret the convention how they wish, using something called “living instrument doctrine”.
Democracy doesn’t seem to count for much. Unlike the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which predates the ECHR by two years and declares that “the will of the people shall be the basis of government”, the ECHR provides no such assurance.
Even before the war, there were more than 17,000 cases pending against Russia before the European Court of Human RightsGetty
That is why it must go. It has become an instrument for an elite band of lawyers to rule over the rest of us, suppressing democratic will.
Not that this will cut much ice with the likes of Hermer and Keir Starmer.
They won’t want to dump the ECHR, or other such structures of international law, because they, of course, are members of that elite — it would be like turkeys voting for Christmas.
Again, to be fair to Hermer, he did acknowledge that there are some problems with the ECHR, and suggested it might have to be renegotiated.
But we have had endless amendments and they have ended the same way — with ever more protocols giving activist judges ever more powers.
Hermer and Starmer are simply drunk on the concept of international law.
Even when they can see its faults they can’t pull themselves away from it, can’t bring themselves to ask whether Britain really needs to be a member of every supra-national treaty and body.
They end up being suckers for the devious agendas of people who populate those bodies.
Lord Hermer’s big idea is “progressive realism”, which he defines as “a rejection of the siren song that can sadly now be heard in the Palace of Westminster, not to mention some sections of the media, that Britain abandon the constraints of international law in favour of raw power”.
Sir Keir Starmer cannot bring himself to argue against Lord Hermer’s agendaGetty
Perverse ruling
But we have already seen where a blind faith in international law leads: for example, to the outrage of the Chagos Islands being given away to Mauritius, a country which has never had ownership of the islands.
The Chagos Islands, by the way, were uninhabited before European settlement.
But then came the perverse ruling of a body called the International Court of Justice and Starmer, of course, could not bring himself to argue against it.
Russia’s membership of the ECHR didn’t exactly stop Putin bumping off his enemies, invading Crimea and waging chemical warfare on the streets of Britain with the Skripal poisonings
The result is not just a multi-billion-pound bill for UK taxpayers to lease back our military base: we have handed sovereignty of a strategic group of islands to a country which is becoming increasingly friendly with China — a nation whose autocratic government doesn’t give a damn for human rights.
That is where a pedantic following of international law gets you.
As Mike Godwin argued, comparing everyone and everything you don’t like to the Nazis belittles the Holocaust.
But the beneficiaries of Hermer and Starmer’s progressive realism aren’t exactly lovers of freedom and democracy.
On the contrary, a blind faith in international law is leading Britain down a dark path.
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