The Attorney General, Lord Hermer, is under fire. Not only for his love of judicial activism. Not only for potential conflicts of interest amassed over years of working for Britain’s sworn enemies.

No, much more seriously for him, he seems to have fallen out with Labour MPs, one of whom described him off the record as ‘personally unbearable’.

It seems his determination to empower lawyers over politicians is making it impossible for ministers to get anything built. Yet it is Hermer, not his critical colleagues, who embodies this Government’s philosophy.

People often claim that Keir Starmer is an empty suit, a lawyer who will argue any brief. But it is not true.

The PM has one belief that has animated him throughout his life. He held it as a young radical editing a Trotskyist magazine. He held it as a crusading barrister. He held it as a Corbyn yes-man. He held it as a Centrist Dad campaigning for election. He holds it today as Prime Minister.

Deep in his bones, Starmer believes in the primacy of human rights law – and, by implication, the primacy of human rights lawyers.

Again and again, we see him ignoring the national interest for the sake of some global convention, or disregarding parliamentary votes at the whim of an activist court.

This legal maximalism explains a number of decisions that seem, on the face of it, to fly in the face of common sense. Why, for example, is Britain paying Mauritius to take a British territory that it has never administered?

Attorney General Lord Hermer seems to have fallen out with Labour MPs, one of whom described him off the record as ‘personally unbearable’

Why do we refuse to deport illegal entrants – even those who have gone on to commit serious crimes here? Why are we decarbonising back to the Stone Age when almost no other country is following?

Why do we import energy from nasty regimes while closing down our cleaner home-grown industries?

Why do we back the International Criminal Court’s claims against an elected head of government, Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu? The answer to each question is the same.

Hermerism-Starmerism – let’s call it Harmerism – is rooted in an exaggerated reverence for the bureaucracies, national and global, that constrain our democracy.

So keen was Starmer to appoint his old friend and colleague that he ignored a century-old convention that the Attorney General should be an MP (or, at the very least, an already-serving peer) and brought him in directly, pushing aside Emily Thornberry.

Hermer’s career, until then, had consisted in large measure of representing anti-British scoundrels. He acted for Shamima Begum against the Home Office, for Gerry Adams against victims’ groups and for Mau Mau insurgents against the British state.

Barristers sometimes talk of the cab-rank principle, meaning that they take the next case to come along. But the sheer number of accused terrorists and assorted Islamists Hermer has defended suggests a pattern.

When he speaks extra-judicially, he leaves no doubt as to where he stands. For example, he contributed to a book on opposing ‘Israeli apartheid’, in which he explained how to sue British firms that sold arms to the Jewish state.

Deep in his bones, Keir Starmer believes in the primacy of human rights law – and, by implication, the primacy of human rights lawyers, writes Daniel Hannan

Israel has always been a target for international human rights lawyers – including (perhaps especially) those who are Jewish. While Israel does sometimes act in ways that deserve censure, the obsessive focus by global activists on a state that measures less than 300 miles from top to bottom requires some explanation. 

My theory is that Israel is unpopular because it is the supreme embodiment of the national principle – that is, of the desire of every people to have their own country.

For 2,000 years, Jews were stateless and scattered, but never lost the dream of statehood: ‘Next year in Jerusalem,’ as the Passover words have it.

Then, against the odds, one day those words came true. An inspiring story if you value national sovereignty; a slap in the face if you despise it.

Since taking office, Hermer seems to have had his fingers on all manner of Government policies, from the Chagos surrender (which is being carried out against the wishes of most Chagossians), to the advice that International Criminal Court rulings are binding on Israel, a non-signatory. What else is he involved in?

The terrier-like shadow justice secretary, Robert Jenrick, is pressing him on whether he had anything to do with the decision on compensation dating from the Northern Ireland conflict, which could open the door to payouts for former republican terrorists and for his old client, Gerry Adams.

‘The whole thing stinks,’ says Jenrick, whose forensic hounding has led fellow Tories to call him ‘the Herminator’. ‘In whose interests is Hermer really acting?’

What makes the Attorney General vulnerable is the palpable disquiet on his own side. Colleagues call him ‘obstructive’, and say that his determination to empower government lawyers over ministers means that almost nothing gets done. One minister briefed over the weekend that Hermer was ‘a freeze on Government’.

The Attorney General should be a quiet, authoritative figure, briefing ministers on legal questions when needed. Instead, Hermer has become an activist, using the law to push through an agenda that makes some of his Labour colleagues flinch.

Listening to other Labour frontbenchers, I detect a disquiet about the Adams case and, indeed, no great enthusiasm for the Chagos deal. 

How can a Government which claims to have run out of money rustle up an eye-watering £9 billion to pay Mauritius to take British territory – Mauritius having already pocketed a big payment from Britain in 1965 for renouncing its claim?

For a Government that is desperate to stimulate growth, but unwilling to reduce spending, Hermer’s decision to strengthen departmental lawyers – most of whom are addicted to Diversity, Equality and Inclusion, greenery and various kinds of workers’ rights – is a real headache.

But even if he were to be seen as too much of a distraction and sacked, would it solve the problem?

Perhaps. But Harmerism, with its determination to see every other country’s point of view except Britain’s, its defence of the human rights of criminals, its reflexive wokery and anti-colonialism and its worship of international courts, would remain the guiding principle of any Government led by Sir Keir.

The irony is that this way of thinking is on the way out everywhere else. When Donald Trump proclaimed the end of the global liberal order, he meant it. Not only has he withdrawn from international arrangements, including the World Health Organisation, he is threatening allies such as Canada and Denmark without even pretending to have a claim beyond brute force.

The rest of the world is rushing to adjust its thinking. The post-war system, which became supreme only in the 1990s and which was based on a diluted form of Harmerism, is finished. No one now thinks governments will be constrained by finger-wagging foreign lawyers.

No one, that is, except Britain. We alone are going in the opposite direction, proclaiming our loyalty to a global order that has ceased to exist. What fools we look.

Lord Hannan of Kingsclere is president of the Institute for Free Trade.