The Attorney General, Lord Hermer, recently gave the annual Harry Street Lecture at Manchester University. Nothing unusual in that. This is a regular gig for the more thoughtful holders of his office. But his speech was notable for its clarity, and it set down a marker.
Lord Hermer’s subject would have seemed pretty routine in an earlier age: the value of the international rules-based order. The UK has played a major role in advancing this since the Second World War. We have backed both the concept and the various international institutions advancing rules-based jurisdiction. The value of the European Convention on Human Rights was the subject of the equivalent speech of his Conservative predecessor in 2015, Dominic Grieve. It may be the consensus was beginning to fray even then—Grieve was talking to his own party as much as anyone else.
The confluence of opinion between a respected Conservative and Labour attorney is unsurprising. It reflects the role of the office in articulating the UK constitution
