Rightwing populists threaten working-class people’s protections under the rule of law, the attorney general will say in his most political intervention yet.
In a criticism directed squarely at Nigel Farage and Robert Jenrick, Richard Hermer will say that populist politicians pose a threat to the “everyday protections to people” who use the legal system and the courts “to right significant wrongs”.
Speaking on the first day of the Labour party’s conference in Liverpool, Hermer will say: “If you can’t trust your case will be heard, or heard fairly, or if your fundamental rights are taken away, it is working-class people who will pay the price.”
His remarks are aimed at rightwing politicians who have increasingly attacked the legal system and in some cases risked collapsing trials by making remarks that could prejudice active court proceedings.
A judge criticised Jenrick, the Tory shadow justice secretary, this month for making “ill thought through” social media comments about a murder trial a week after it had begun.
Writing about the trial of Elias Morgan for the murder of the former prison officer Lenny Scott, Jenrick said in a since-deleted post on X on 1 July: “Lenny exposed corruption and took on the gangster controlling a prison wing. He received threats to his life, but he was left unsupported. Four years later he was shot dead. That will enrage any decent person. We need radical change, now.”
His tweet was raised in court without the jury, by the prosecutor, Alex Leach KC, when he told Mr Justice Goose that “the post is problematic because it delivers as apparent fact what the prosecution relies upon”. The prosecution took steps to have it taken down and it is no longer online. Morgan was found guilty on 29 August.
Separately, the Reform UK MP Richard Tice has endorsed vigilante-style gangs patrolling the streets, in remarks that critics said undermined the police and rule of law.
And at a Reform press conference last month, a man awaiting trial was referred to as “the criminal” by a Reform council leader despite not yet being convicted of any crime. Questioned on whether contempt laws had been broken, Farage said it was “good” that the council leader had become “slightly emotional”.
Hermer will say: “The rule of law is under threat from populists, whose ineffective solutions would harm working-class people. They are attempting to kick away the support net for ordinary people, who use our legal and judicial system to right significant wrongs.”
He will make the remarks at a conference fringe event hosted by the UCL Policy Institute and More in Common.
A source close to the attorney general said he “wants to make a more proactive case for how rights offer everyday protections for working-class people, such as the Human Rights Act helping secure justice for the families of those killed in the Hillsborough disaster, and as a platform for economic growth”.
Hermer will argue that the increase in inflammatory rhetoric against lawyers “has real-world consequences as well, including an increase in personal attacks on judges and lawyers, who are simply doing their jobs”.
The comments build on a speech he made at the Old Bailey over the summer where he criticised “a worrying tendency in recent times in this country to attack the judiciary – to seek to undermine them by portraying them as partisan”.
“We have seen an increase in personal attack on individual judges, not only by newspapers but by British politicians – including frontbenchers in parliament – in terms that would have seemed scarcely believable even only a few years ago,” Hermer said.
“This has been accompanied by an increase in physical and online threats to judges, mirrored in some appalling threats to lawyers. These attacks are as misplaced as they are dangerous.”
