Thanks to some great journalistic work, it is now clear that the legal slimeball Lord Hermer is wholly unsuitable to sit around the Cabinet table.
We now have the email proof that our nation has an Attorney General in Lord Hermer who believes human rights lawyers do more good for society than the decorated soldiers he and his legal chums had falsely accused of murder and torture.
The evidence has come in some fine work by journalists at The Telegraph who have uncovered messages from Starmer’s closest ally following the public inquiry that destroyed Hermer’s claims that British troops tortured and executed civilians in southern Iraq.
Instead of accepting that he and other lawyers had made a terrible mistake in pursuing a false claim against our brave boys and that they should apologise to them for the years of pain and worry, he chose to go on the attack.
In correspondence to colleagues, Hermer said the falsely accused soldiers could never claim to have ‘’made a real difference to people’s lives’’ unlike the lawyers who had pursued the case for a decade.
He sure made a ‘’difference’’ to people’s lives. Those soldiers would have known they were innocent, but must have wondered as they tried to sleep who would believe them with a collection of Iraqi Muslim militia not only telling a pack of lies, but finding people like Hermer being paid £450 an hour to believe them.
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The disclosure of the new emails must intensify pressure to dismiss Hermer over his major role in the scandal of the 2004 Battle of Danny Boy, in which our troops were wrongly branded as murderers and torturers.
Not a word of it was true, but it took a judge-led inquiry to discover that all the allegations were ‘’deliberate lies’’ driven by ‘’ingrained hostility’’ towards our army. Most of the lies were pedalled by a solicitor called Phil Shiner, subsequently struck off and bankrupt. Hooray.
But it took handmaidens like Hermer to keep up the pressure. Of course, Starmer likes him as they worship human rights. I'm convinced it's the reason Starmer won’t stop the Channel migrants - he views them as clients for the future. As does Hermer.
In an email dated April 20, 2014, Hermer expressed support for a junior solicitor who had failed to recognise the significance of a bombshell document that fatally undermined the Iraqi case proving they were not innocent farmers, as they had claimed, but were members of the Mahdi Army, an Iran-backed militia that fought British forces.
Hermer wrote to Anna Crowther, a solicitor at Leigh Day: 'You should not feel too low about it. You are making an extraordinary contribution to securing redress for torture victims in Iraq.
'Your hard work, dedication and ability are outstanding and have made a real contribution to people’s lives that Forbes, Neil Garnham and his clients can ever say.'
Lord Hermer’s insult to our war heroes means even Keir Starmer must sack him | Getty Images
Why shouldn’t she feel low about it? She had a huge mistake, and were it not justice being done at the inquiry, those soldiers might one day have been in the dock.
Sir Neil Garnham, now a High Court judge, was lead counsel for the British troops at the pubic inquiry and his ‘’clients’’ were the soldiers falsely accused.
Last week, Hermer claimed he had become involved in the case partly to give soldiers ‘’the opportunity to show their innocence through a proper investigation’’. In light of that email, that explanation must be viewed as b*****s with a capital B.
Surely Hermer’s position is untenable. His disdain for our soldiers and believing that human rights lawyers can be seen in some odd way as doing better, more important work than soldiers who walk forward in the face of enemy gunfire is disgraceful.
Hermer is on the wrong side of every argument. I believe he should go, but as he’s one of the few, even in the Labour Party, who think Starmer should stay, you can see that is never going to happen.
One of Hermer’s main roles is to determine the legality of military operations. His judgment has been found wanting on more than one occasion.
Be easier if he fell on his sword. Keeping my fingers crossed.