The Attorney General, Richard Hermer, faced backlash after likening calls to disregard international treaties to early Nazi Germany in a speech. He defended adherence to international law, criticizing those advocating to leave the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), which he claimed bolsters national security. Critics, including Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage, rebuked his remarks, calling them an embarrassing misstep. Hermer later acknowledged his choice of words was clumsy, despite rejecting characterizations of his speech by the Conservative Party, emphasizing the importance of international law against threats like Russia and organized crime.
Hermer said in his speech to the Royal United Services Institute: "The claim that international law is fine as far as it goes, but can be put aside when conditions change, is a claim that was made in the early 1930s by realist' jurists in Germany, most notably Carl Schmitt, whose central thesis was in essence the claim that state power is all that counts, not law."
Kemi Badenoch accused Lord Hermer of starting from a position of self-loathing, where Britain is always wrong and everyone else is right, and demanded an apology.
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