Starmer’s law chief must come clean on his part in repeal of the Legacy Act
Attorney-General Lord Hermer once represented Gerry Adams
The legal world is a small one and as cosy as a bedbug in a recently-vacated duvet.
So it was no surprise that the Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, first ennobled, then anointed his old friend Richard Hermer, KC, as Labour’s new Attorney-General.
As young barristers in Doughty Street Chambers, Starmer, 62, and Lord Hermer, 56, shaped their world view through the prism of the law as they championed underdogs and nearly-lost causes.
They are said to be peas in a pod, men who venerate the law and who have spent their first few months in office complying precisely with the rulings of international courts.
But now Hermer, a newbie in the cockpit of politics, has been clawed. It started with the disclosure in The Times that he trousered a tidy £30,000 to represent the loathsome Gerry Adams in a High Court case against IRA bomb victims.
Hermer sees nothing wrong with this. He believes absolutely in the principle that lawyers should be able to represent clients “irrespective of their own views as to what their client did, whether it was morally right or morally wrong”.
Or, as some would have it: “Lawyers are men who hire out their words and anger.”
Joe Public, Hermer the politician will learn, doesn’t care much about sacred legal principles when he sees people like former Sinn Fein leader Adams – who some say was on the Provisional IRA’s Army Council when it blew up the Old Bailey and Manchester’s Arndale Centre – queuing up with his hand out for taxpayers’ cash.
Starmer is preparing to repeal the Legacy Act, which might allow Adams to claim compensation from the British Government for his detention without trial as a terror suspect in the 1970s.
Hermer was paid £24,000 for advice and to prepare court filings after the case was lodged in 2022 and another £6,000 to appear at a hearing in 2023, The Times learnt. The case is due to go to trial next year.
It is easy to see the outrage it would cause if Adams was given a payout. Starmer has said he would seek “every conceivable way” to stop it. But if it happened, both he and Hermer would shrug and say: “What can we do, that’s the law?”
There is a potential, if not an actual, conflict of interest here. Hermer has refused to tell MPs whether he took any part in the decision on whether to repeal the Legacy Act.
The convention is that he does not have to say but a source told The Times that he did not. They said policy decisions were taken by the Northern Ireland Secretary, not the Attorney-General.
Why can’t Hermer say that himself? How important decisions are arrived at in government should be completely transparent. They should be written down and available for scrutiny.
Predictably, the Shadow Justice Secretary, Robert Jenrick, has now called for the Cabinet Secretary to investigate whether any conflicts of interest exist in Hermer’s dealings with past cases, including the Adams affair and the deal to hand over the Chagos Islands.
He is making mischief, of course, but there is a serious point here.
The legal world is not a private club where men like Starmer and his Attorney-General can take refuge from the real world, hide behind conventions, put themselves above the fray.
They are in politics now, running the country, controlling our lives. And we, the electorate, want to know how they are doing it, and why.
That’s not too much to expect.
*****
I sense rising panic at the Telegraph, mired in the “auction from hell”.
On Saturday, The Times reported in its business section that the Abu Dhabi fund controlling the sale of the Telegraph had urged bosses there to sack more than 100 people.
It wanted the group to meet its profit targets and to “forget” the onward sale of the business.
David Castelblanco, a partner at the fund Redbird, wants Telegraph bosses to cut one in 10 non-editorial jobs and to pause planned investment in a US newsroom.
They want to recoup the £600 million they put into the group. So far they have got back £100 million for the sale of The Spectator.
David Efune, owner of the New York Sun, is keen to buy but can’t raise the cash. No one else thinks it is worth the asking price, even as a “trophy” purchase.
It seems Redbird, bankrolled by Abu Dhabi royalty, senses that it might, after all, be allowed to own the papers.
Former Tory leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith stepped into the row yesterday, perhaps at the behest of the Telegraph.
He asked Ministers to enforce a ban on foreign state ownership of newspapers. Rishi Sunak passed a law scuppering Redbird’s chances of owning the Telegraph group. But it requires secondary legislation, which Keir Starmer’s Labour has not yet addressed.
“The Government is completely foot-dragging – the reality is they don’t want to upset the UAE,” said Duncan Smith.
Meanwhile, the foot soldiers in Buckingham Palace Road continue to bring out a pretty decent paper, if a little Right wing for my taste. But aren’t you glad you don’t work there?
*****
My favourite story of the week is one that will appeal to sub-editors, especially if they have worked on a backbench.
It concerns a New York tabloid newspaper (the Post, I think, but I’ve lost the cutting from The Times Diary).
The convention was that the splash headline never dropped below a certain point size. One day they wrote a heading containing the line “20 dead”.
Trouble was, to make it fit they would have needed to shrink the headline by a single point below the acceptable size.
So, when it hit the streets, it read: “19 dead”.
I must admit, part of me thinks, “Genius”.
*****
“I won’t say ours was a tough school, but we had our own coroner. We used to write essays like “What I’m Going To Be If I Grow Up.” – Lenny Bruce
RICHARD DISMORE
21 January 2025