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If, at the end of last year, you had asked Labour insiders to choose Keir Starmer’s defining decision as prime minister, they might have said means testing winter fuel payments or announcing billions in tax rises on business.
Now, however, many believe Starmer’s most consequential move – and the one that will determine the direction of his government – is making his friend and former colleague Richard Hermer attorney general.
Hermer, one of the UK’s pre-eminent public law barristers, worked alongside Starmer at Doughty Street Chambers in the early 2000s. He was given a seat in the House of Lords in order to become the government’s top law officer in July.
He has now become a lightning rod for criticism from the Conservatives, who have accused him of potential conflicts of interest, and from some inside the Labour tent who see him as a blocker of legislative progress. He is subject to daily attacks in sections of the media over everything from his legal advice in government to his past client roster and the political views he has expressed on podcasts.
Many government figures – including some at the Home Office and Foreign Office, departments that have worked closely with Hermer on drafting legislation – are baffled by the attacks and the implicit suggestion that the government should be less concerned about following the law. Senior ministers and advisers told the Guardian that rather than impeding it, the attorney general had helped fix poorly drafted legislation.
Areas where Hermer is accused of slowing things down include the border security bill and the Hillsborough law to establish a duty of candour for public officials. His critics, said to include members of the cabinet, say he is obsessed with process and that he dresses up political opinions as objective legal fact.
Even those who have witnessed Hermer’s input lead to delays are surprised by the vitriol directed against him by government figures quoted anonymously in the press.
“He has quite a strict approach – he doesn’t want ministers to take powers to be able to do things without parliament’s consent. But that’s obviously part of our commitment to good government,” said a senior source who has witnessed some of the tensions.
Another senior government figure said the attacks against Hermer were “deeply unfair”, adding: “If you were a member of the cabinet who wanted to know how to deliver on this government’s missions while also navigating the law, you couldn’t ask for someone with more ability.”
Insiders believe Hermer has become a sort of cipher for the prime minister and his approach. This week Maurice Glasman, the Blue Labour founder who has found new relevance through his friendship with the US vice-president, JD Vance, called Hermer “an arrogant, progressive fool who thinks that law is a replacement for politics”.
It’s a criticism that Starmer – who hates this sort of vicious briefing – will have certainly heard levelled against himself. “I think there is some proxy work going on – having a go at the big man by having a go at [Hermer],” a well-connected senior Labour figure said. “They are very, very similar in many ways. There are some people who think, politically, we need to be more Blue Labour. And there’s a different strain which says: ‘This is government by lawyers for lawyers.’”
Charles Falconer, the Labour peer who was Starmer’s shadow attorney general until 2021, said Hermer had become “a pawn” and “means of attacking the government for being lily-livered on various things”. He said Starmer had appointed him because “he wanted the best”.
“The picture that is being painted of him as a madly progressive lawyer is inaccurate. He is essentially pragmatic and mainstream and will undoubtedly be trying to procure success for team Labour,” Falconer said. “If you’re going to take a tough line on immigration it is important to be doing it within the law – and [Starmer] wanted someone who would help him take as tough a line as possible.”
Besides the claims about him slowing down legislation, Hermer has also faced criticism over foreign policy decisions, including handing sovereignty over the Chagos Islands to Mauritius and suspending some arms sales to Israel, to which his advice is said to have contributed.
“He has been presented as anti-Israel,” one government source said. “That is not true at all. He speaks Hebrew, has a deep commitment to Jewish life and has family in the Israel Defense Forces.”
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His past legal work, including his representation of Gerry Adams and advice to Caribbean countries seeking reparations, has been raked over by Tories who have demanded that he publicly recuse himself from some areas – even though this goes against government convention. He has also come under scrutiny for defending the disgraced human rights lawyer Phil Shiner while he was under investigation by the solicitors’ watchdog.
Accusations of conflicts of interest – prosecuted chiefly by Robert Jenrick, the shadow justice secretary – have so far come to nothing. The Guardian has seen a letter sent to a Tory MP by the prime minister’s independent ethics adviser this week saying there was no basis for an investigation. The Lords standards commissioner has also dismissed a complaint.
Observers say that because of his political inexperience Hermer has not been nimble enough in responding to these attacks. He has now begun engaging in the more personal side of politics, including by informally meeting Labour MPs, particularly from the 2024 intake, for coffee.
His critics will undoubtedly find new avenues to pursue, but Hermer’s allies say that far from buckling under the pressure, he will serve for as long as the prime minister wants him to. Eventually Starmer is likely to face a choice: back the attorney general against his internal detractors, or replace him.
Asked by a Tory MP if he had “faith in [Hermer’s] motives” at prime minister’s questions on Wednesday, Starmer gave an impassioned defence.
“Everybody’s entitled to legal representation in this country: that means that lawyers don’t necessarily agree with their clients. The Conservative party used to believe in that principle,” Starmer said. “If they now disagree with that principle they should go and see the victims of very serious crime, including sexual crime, and tell them that … victims will be cross-examined by perpetrators.”
It would seem that, for now at least, Hermer isn’t going anywhere.
