Five years ago, the man who is now Lord Hermer gave an interview to the Times. The then QC was asked how he’d want to be remembered. The answer he gave was curious. ‘The world will be a better place,’ he said, ‘when privileged men like me stop seeking a place in history.’ I’m not sure who Lord Hermer thinks should be seeking a place in history, though I assume he was just paying lip service to the spirit of 2020 and wanted to be read to mean that in future most of the running should be done by underprivileged transsexuals.
While I cannot agree on the substance, I can agree on one specific. The world would certainly be a much better place if people like Lord Hermer stopped seeking historic roles. For although he is now the Attorney General of England and Wales, there is little to suggest that his noble lordship has any love for this country. Indeed, he appears to have spent his career defending anyone who literally wants to attack us.
In their recent efforts to explain the Attorney General’s unfortunate list of past clients, Hermer’s defenders claim that as a barrister he had to obey the ‘cab-rank’ rules of the job. It was for this reason, they say, that Hermer spent his career defending such clients as Gerry Adams and almost every variety of Islamic terrorist. Yet the claim is demonstrably daft. To have represented one al-Qaeda terrorist might be a duty, but to represent at least five would seem to be a habit. Never mind that your other clients include the families of Isis members and so on.
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