\n<\/p>\n
T<\/span>he international human rights system \u2013 the rules, principles and practices intended to ensure that states do not abuse people \u2013 is under greater threat now than at any other point since 1945. Fortunately, we in the UK couldn\u2019t wish for a better-qualified prime minister to face this challenge. Keir Starmer is a distinguished former human rights lawyer and prosecutor, with a 30-year career behind him, who expresses a deep personal commitment to defending ordinary people against injustice. He knows human rights law inside out \u2013 in fact, he literally wrote the book on its European incarnation \u2013 and has acted as a lawyer at more or less every level of the system. (Starmer is the only British prime minister, and probably the only world leader, to have argued a case under the genocide convention \u2013 against Serbia on behalf of Croatia in 2014 \u2013 at the international court of justice.) He is also an experienced administrator, through his time as director of public prosecutions (DPP), which means he knows how to operate the machinery of state better than most politicians do.<\/p>\n Unfortunately, there\u2019s someone standing in Starmer\u2019s way: a powerful man who critics say is helping to weaken the international human rights system. He fawns over authoritarian demagogues abroad and is seeking to diminish the protections the UK offers to some vulnerable minorities. He conflates peaceful, if disruptive, protest with deadly terrorism and calls for musicians whose views and language he dislikes to be dropped from festival bills. At times, he uses his public platform to criticise courts, whose independence is vital to maintaining the human rights system. At others, he uses legal sophistry to avoid openly stating and defending his own political position, including on matters of life and death. He is, even some of his admirers admit, a ruthless careerist prepared to jettison his stated principles when politically expedient. That person is also called Keir Starmer.<\/p>\n Since the 2024 general election, much ink has been spilled on what Labour is getting wrong in government. But I\u2019ve been puzzled by a slightly different question: why is Labour\u2019s record to date on human rights \u2013 the one thing you might expect a Starmer-led government to be rock solid on \u2013 so mixed? Over the past six months, I have spoken to more than two dozen sources, including current and former Labour insiders, former legal colleagues of Starmer\u2019s and leading human rights advocates, to try to understand how Starmer the lawyer might be shaping Starmer the prime minister.<\/p>\n Some human rights experts are delighted that, after the scorched-earth years of Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak, there has been a shift in tone and content. \u201cIt is a major achievement,\u201d says Conor Gearty, a professor of human rights law at the London School of Economics and long-term acquaintance of Starmer, \u201cto have stabilised Britain\u2019s commitment to law at a time when the current is flowing the other way internationally.\u201d For the author, barrister and academic Philippe Sands, a prominent critic of the 2003 Iraq war, the UK is belatedly restoring a reputation it shredded two decades ago. \u201cWhen I\u2019ve gone to meetings in the UN, when I\u2019ve gone to meetings in the Council of Europe, I\u2019ve seen that Britain is once more taken seriously in relation to building a more positive agenda on human rights.\u201d Sands is particularly encouraged by Labour\u2019s commitment to setting up a special tribunal for Russian war crimes in Ukraine, despite the US\u2019s wavering support. Such achievements, Sands and Gearty believe, are in no small part down to Starmer himself. \u201cHe does well in a crisis,\u201d says a senior barrister who worked on several cases with Starmer in the 2000s. \u201cThat\u2019s what litigators do: they enter the fray at the moment of complete crisis and shitshow.\u201d<\/p>\n Others, to put it mildly, aren\u2019t so keen. Before the election, Starmer told a meeting of Iranian women activists that a Labour government would put human rights at the heart of everything it did. \u201cThat\u2019s the biggest load of crap I\u2019ve ever heard,\u201d says a campaigner at a UK charity who regularly meets with ministers and officials. The campaigner reeled off a list of complaints, from policies on migration, policing and protest, to disability benefit cuts and a failure to push harder for an end to Israel\u2019s war in Gaza. Some former colleagues are shocked that Starmer presides over all this. \u201cGiven he made his career off a woman who constantly scaled the fences of US bases,\u201d says the criminal defence solicitor Matt Foot, referring to Lindis Percy, a veteran peace activist Starmer represented several times in the 1990s and 00s, \u201cwhat he\u2019s doing on protest is particularly sickening.\u201d<\/p>\n Staff at several human rights NGOs described encountering a brittle, defensive attitude from ministers in private meetings. \u201cThey think the human rights community should put up and shut up,\u201d said one. \u201cThere\u2019s a tone as if our agenda is against the interests of UK citizens,\u201d said another, who focuses on international issues. \u201cThe line that comes back is that this is irrelevant to ordinary people\u2019s concerns.\u201d All said that this attitude emanated most strongly from officials working for the prime minister, an interpretation echoed by two people familiar with cabinet-level conversations. Several human rights advocates described being made to feel they should just be grateful it was Labour and not the Tories in charge.<\/p>\n <\/span>Lindis Percy in 2002. Starmer defended the peace activist after her repeated incursions into US military bases. <\/span> Photograph: Christopher Thomond\/The Guardian<\/p>\n How to explain, then, what Yasmine Ahmed, the UK director of Human Rights Watch, described to me as this \u201csplit personality approach\u201d? Some government insiders complain about a lack of overall strategy and an insular, macho \u201cboys\u2019 club\u201d surrounding Starmer \u2013 frequent criticisms of Labour in recent months \u2013 while the human rights advocates I spoke to say some officials are inexperienced. Much of the answer, however, surely resides with Starmer himself, and his own ambiguous politics.<\/p>\n There are three Starmer biographies to date, each with a very different perspective. One is a critique from the left, one from the right and one, with his input, very positive. Yet all three books tell roughly the same story. Starmer started off on the radical left, as a talented young barrister, but tacked towards the centre as his career progressed and his political ambitions grew, becoming DPP \u2013 helping run what a former colleague described to me as \u201cthe really nasty parts of the state\u201d \u2013 before entering politics.<\/p>\n As an MP, he ran for Labour leader on a leftwing platform and then moved sharply rightwards; depending on your political preference, either a smart strategic move, or what Simon Fletcher, who was a senior adviser to Starmer in his first year as leader of the opposition, told me he now views as a \u201cmassive, massive con\u201d. He eschews ideology \u2013 \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as Starmerism and there never will be. I will make decisions one after the other,\u201d Starmer reportedly told colleagues while leader of the opposition \u2013 and his detail-focused lawyer\u2019s mind leads him to make effective, short-term tactical choices, but also blinds him to the wider consequences of his actions.<\/p>\n \u201cHe can be very tunnel-visioned,\u201d concedes the senior barrister who praised his skills in a crisis, adding that on occasion it leads Starmer the politician to make statements that any lawyer would find \u201cfrankly, weird\u201d. (Starmer\u2019s assertion during an interview in October 2023 that Israel \u201chas the right\u201d to cut off water and electricity to Gaza \u2013 acts that are clearly war crimes \u2013 and his subsequent backtracking is the notorious example.) This pattern has continued into government. \u201cHe keeps blindsiding people,\u201d says the head of one UK charity, pointing to the sudden decision in February to cut international aid. (\u201cThat really was a case of, \u2018Oh shit, we need to find \u00a32bn for defence,\u2019\u201d one government official told me.)<\/p>\n This isn\u2019t just about Starmer, though. Human rights represent an idea with revolutionary implications: that we all have the right to freedom and dignity, wherever we live, and that it is everyone\u2019s business to make sure of it. This goal is yet to be fully realised and the project to achieve it is riven with contradictions \u2013 the same contradictions, in fact, that we find in the two faces of Starmer. \u201cIs he the man to save the system?\u201d asks another former colleague. \u201cThat depends on what you think the system is.\u201d<\/p>\n I<\/span>n 2020, Starmer told Desert Island Discs what had attracted him to human rights as a law student in the 1980s. \u201cI became absolutely fascinated with the idea that at the end of the second world war, and the atrocities of the second world war, the countries around the world came together and made commitments to each other to honour human rights,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s not so much the individual rights, but it\u2019s the human dignity that sits behind [them].\u201d<\/p>\n Now, is that a radical sentiment, or a conservative one? In a way, it\u2019s both. A tension within the human rights project is that it cuts across traditional political distinctions of left and right. The founding principles, outlined in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, stress both individual freedom and<\/em> socioeconomic equality. What\u2019s more, human rights have an ambiguous relationship to the state. On the one hand, the claim that rights exist due to our common humanity, no matter who\u2019s in charge, implies a challenge to established power. On the other, it reinforces existing power structures \u2013 since the human rights system only works if national governments agree to respect the rules. And to make those rules work in practice, you need laws, courts and an elite group of technicians who know how to work the levers: in other words, lawyers.<\/p>\n Traditionally, the British left was sceptical of the postwar human rights project, seeing it as a distraction from class struggle \u2013 and a tool the right could use to prevent any socialist government from redistributing wealth, on the grounds of individual liberty. When Starmer was starting out as a lawyer, co-founding the progressive Doughty Street barristers\u2019 chambers in 1990, he expressed a similar scepticism. In a 1991 article for the radical Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers \u2013 of which he was a prominent member \u2013 Starmer warned that relying on legal institutions to bring about social change was \u201cputting the cart before the horse\u201d.<\/p>\n The collapse of communism abroad and Thatcher\u2019s victory over organised labour at home prompted a change in attitudes. After the 1992 election, the Labour party committed to introducing a bill that would incorporate human rights protections into UK law. Writing in 1995, Starmer welcomed the prospect. \u201cOur task, as socialist lawyers,\u201d he argued, was to begin drafting a document that would bring about \u201can equal \u2026 distribution not only of political power, but also of economic power.\u201d The following year, Starmer co-authored an audit of the UK\u2019s compliance with international human rights standards, an influential book in Labour circles as Blair\u2019s team drew up their plans for government.<\/p>\n By the time of the 1997 election, Starmer was a rising legal star. His rightwing biographer Michael Ashcroft places him at the centre of the elite professional milieu that rose along with New Labour. Many progressive lawyers welcomed the arrival of the Human Rights Act, passed in 1998, amid the modernising first flush of Blairism. Phillippa Kaufmann, a leading human rights barrister and an ex-partner of Starmer\u2019s, told Starmer\u2019s favoured biographer, Tom Baldwin, that it felt as if they were \u201cdriving forward the vehicle of change\u201d. Starmer, who in 2002 was made queen\u2019s counsel, or QC \u2013 the highest rank of barrister, now KC \u2013 added the act to his already formidable arsenal of expertise. In 2003, he represented a group of asylum-seekers who successfully challenged the government\u2019s attempt to deny them housing and benefit payments; a few years later, he helped overturn control orders (restrictions on the movement and liberty of terrorism suspects, introduced by Blair) that had been placed on two men. Both sets of cases were won on human rights grounds.<\/p>\n <\/span>Keir Starmer in 2002, the year he became a QC.<\/span> Photograph: Uppa<\/p>\n It\u2019s not possible to read a barrister\u2019s list of cases as an index of their political opinions, since barristers \u2013 whose job is to argue in court on behalf of their clients \u2013 operate by the \u201ccab rank\u201d rule, where they must offer their services on a first come, first served basis. But by the areas of law in which they choose to specialise, it is possible to see where their interests lie. Starmer\u2019s interest clearly lay in protecting individuals from being harmed by the state and other powerful institutions. (One of his longest-running cases, for which he provided free legal advice, was that of the McLibel duo, environmentalist campaigners sued by McDonald\u2019s.) What that meant politically changed over time, however.<\/p>\n In the early 00s, Starmer chose to advise the Northern Ireland Policing Board on how to make the Police Service of Northern Ireland, established after the Good Friday agreement, compliant with human rights standards. That work seemed to represent a shift in his view of the state. Rather than seeing it as an adversary that serves mainly to protect wealth and privilege, as a radical leftist might put it, according to Baldwin he was coming to believe that a human rights lawyer could work most effectively on the inside. By making the state\u2019s coercive functions compliant with human rights standards, they could be exercised more efficiently, and thus fairly.<\/p>\n As DPP from 2008 to 2013, Starmer brought a fundamentally bureaucratic approach to the role, say his biographers. One of his proudest achievements, he has said, was overseeing his agency\u2019s transition from paper to digital record-keeping. Even Starmer\u2019s critics acknowledge that making top-down tweaks to the rules had some benefits. The criminal defence solicitor Matt Foot, for instance, told me that Starmer\u2019s guidance to prosecutors advising a light touch on assisted dying cases averted a lot of unnecessary suffering. \u201cI had several clients at police stations who weren\u2019t charged as a result,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n At other times, notably during the 2011 riots, Starmer was comfortable using the full force of the state \u2013 a fact that his leftwing biographer, Oliver Eagleton, takes him to task for. Whether Starmer was right or wrong to do so is another matter. But it\u2019s consistent with a particular interpretation of what human rights are there for. \u201cI don\u2019t think there\u2019s a hidden emancipatory human rights fanatic inside Keir Starmer,\u201d Gearty told me. Starmer decided to work within the state \u201cbecause he understood the importance of the rules\u201d.<\/p>\n A<\/span> second tension within the human rights system is that it requires the cooperation of national governments, yet asks them to sign up to agreements that restrain their power. In the UK, that tension expresses itself most strongly in the political battle over the European convention on human rights and, by extension, the Human Rights Act, which incorporates the ECHR into UK law. Together, they are intended to restrain the government and other public bodies from arbitrarily mistreating us.<\/p>\n A vocal section of the British right has long sought to weaken or remove these protections. But in the last few years it has become a totemic issue akin to Britain\u2019s membership of the EU before Brexit: withdrawing from the ECHR would, they say, take back control from a set of rules \u2013 and the liberal elite that upholds them \u2013 that are undermining national sovereignty. In particular, the right\u2019s opprobrium is directed at article 8, the right to a private and family life, which it claims forces the British state to let unwanted migrants live in the UK.<\/p>\n Given Starmer\u2019s background, you would expect his government to be solidly opposed to this assault on human rights \u2013 and in a way, it has been. Among the first things Starmer did as prime minister was to state publicly that his government would never withdraw from the ECHR, one of several gestures intended to signal the incoming government\u2019s commitment to international treaties and the rule of law.<\/p>\n Human rights NGOs agree that the shift in approach has changed things, up to a point. \u201cThere\u2019s a marked difference in the way I engage with this government compared with the last one,\u201d says Yasmine Ahmed of Human Rights Watch, who regularly meets with ministers and officials to discuss international and domestic policy. \u201cThey\u2019re willing to sit down and have thoughtful conversations about human rights issues.\u201d The trouble, says Ahmed, is that this generally only extends to subjects the government sees as politically safe, such as the humanitarian crisis prompted by the war in Sudan. When her organisation raises more politically risky topics, such as migration or the Gaza war, then the government\u2019s response, especially at higher levels, is much more limited.<\/p>\n In March, under pressure from the right, Starmer\u2019s government announced a review of how article 8 is used in immigration cases. Several human rights experts told me they believed this lent weight to a damaging myth that would, in the words of one campaigner at a human rights NGO, \u201cpour fuel on the fire\u201d. Jamie Burton, a senior barrister and a former colleague of Starmer\u2019s at Doughty Street, told me that ceding ground on article 8 \u2013 which also protects British citizens, for example, from unwanted media intrusion \u2013 would be a \u201close-lose scenario\u201d. In a recent article, Burton argued that the use of article 8 has already been so heavily restricted in immigration cases that any further tweaks would be useless and only encourage demands for the UK to drop it entirely. Dominic Grieve, a former Conservative attorney general, told me that in his view, attention would be better focused on delays in the courts system rather than article 8 itself. The delays, he said, were \u201cnot helpful to maintaining public confidence in the ECHR\u201d.<\/p>\n Grieve, who as attorney general oversaw Starmer as DPP, told me he was confident in the prime minister\u2019s commitment to human rights. For many lawyers, however \u2013 regardless of their personal views on policy \u2013 it is Starmer\u2019s own rhetoric that has been most upsetting. Notably, at a session of prime minister\u2019s questions in February 2025, Starmer said that a court had made the \u201cwrong decision\u201d to allow a family of six trying to flee Gaza to join their brother in the UK, based on a \u201clegal loophole\u201d. Whether the decision was based on any kind of loophole is questionable: a judge found that while they had applied under the Ukraine resettlement scheme, for which they were ineligible, they nonetheless had the right to reunite with their brother under article 8. But many lawyers were appalled that Starmer, of all people, would criticise the decision of an independent court. \u201cFor him to criticise a judge as prime minister with his background was extraordinary,\u201d another KC who worked with Starmer in the 00s told me. (At the time, in response to the criticism \u2013 including from Lady Carr, the most senior judge in England and Wales \u2013 a spokesperson for Starmer said he had full respect for the independence of the judiciary.)<\/p>\n Starmer\u2019s rhetoric can be explained as the government\u2019s response to the rise of Reform UK.<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019re expecting a further Tory wipeout, so the next election will be Starmer v Farage,\u201d one person familiar with cabinet-level discussions told me. \u201cThat\u2019s the explicit strategy. But what\u2019s not explicit is what that means for the postwar settlement and human rights, all these knock-on effects.\u201d The source continued: \u201cIf you\u2019re more on the left of that debate, if you\u2019re David Lammy or Angela Rayner or Lisa Nandy, you don\u2019t want to stick your hand up in cabinet and say, have we thought about where this is heading \u2013 because you\u2019ll get a combination of Morgan McSweeney, John Healey and Pat McFadden [respectively, Starmer\u2019s chief of staff and two cabinet ministers] saying, \u2018What the fuck are you talking about?\u2019\u201d Both the source and another person familiar with cabinet-level discussions said that ministers whose views differ also fear being anonymously briefed against in the media.<\/p>\n <\/span>Reform party leader Nigel Farage speaking during a press conference in Westminster.<\/span> Photograph: Lucy North\/PA<\/p>\n The real problem, both added, is that you never know where Starmer himself sits. As if to illustrate the point, in May the current attorney general, Richard Hermer \u2013 appointed by Starmer last July \u2013 gave a major speech on the government\u2019s commitment to the rule of law. For the most part, it was a strongly worded critique of the \u201cpseudo-realists\u201d in Westminster who argue that the old global order is dead and that Britain should withdraw from the ECHR and other treaties it finds inconvenient. It was a notable intervention, since Hermer, another former human rights barrister, has become a lightning rod for the right\u2019s critique of the Starmer government.<\/p>\n In an echo of the attacks once deployed against Starmer when he was leader of the opposition, Hermer\u2019s critics have been dredging up his old cases to cast aspersions on his politics. (The most lurid stunt so far involves a video in which the Conservative shadow justice secretary, Robert Jenrick, parades in front of easels showing pictures of Hermer\u2019s former clients, including Shamima Begum and Gerry Adams.) Hermer has been briefed against from within Labour, too, by officials who believe his professional background and insistence that ministers follow legal advice closely are damaging the party\u2019s image. But Starmer has, for now, kept his attorney general in post. \u201cStarmer has put Hermer there to keep himself honest,\u201d suggested one Labour strategist I spoke to.<\/p>\n In that context, it was tempting to see Hermer\u2019s speech as a sign of Starmer\u2019s own worldview. Within hours, however, Hermer found himself at the centre of yet more criticism, for suggesting the \u201cpseudo-realists\u201d were borrowing their ideas from the 20th-century German jurist Carl Schmitt. In scholarly circles, Schmitt\u2019s conservative ideas are widely discussed \u2013 but he\u2019s better known for being the Nazis\u2019 favourite legal theorist. A day later, Downing Street ordered Hermer to apologise.<\/p>\n For some people I spoke to, this showed one of Starmer\u2019s wider weaknesses: he is committed to following the letter of the law, but unwilling to take the risk of arguing for the underlying principles. \u201cOver the last 10 to 15 years, human rights have almost become dirty words,\u201d said Karla McLaren, political relations manager for Amnesty International\u2019s UK branch. \u201cWe were hoping the new government would come in and try to change that. But that\u2019s not what we\u2019ve seen. If you look at what cabinet ministers say, even when they\u2019re talking about human rights issues, they very rarely use human rights language.\u201d<\/p>\n One person familiar with cabinet-level conversations made a similar point, in reference to the ECHR. \u201cWe\u2019ve allowed the right to define the issue. It does seem baffling to me that we keep attacking a bunch of laws that are very much in our interest, and probably more in our interest than for some other countries.\u201d<\/p>\n A<\/span> third tension in the human rights system is that it requires powerful states to enforce it, yet is undermined by an unequal global distribution of power. If states can pick and choose who is held accountable for human rights abuses, then it makes a mockery of the claim these rights are universal \u2013 and gives other states less of an incentive to participate. Nowhere has this become more apparent than in the west\u2019s response to the war in Gaza, an issue that, as one official put it to me, \u201cpeople have lots of very strong views about\u201d.<\/p>\n To date, in its response to the Hamas attacks of 7 October 2023, Israel has killed at least 59,000 Palestinians in Gaza. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch \u2013 NGOs whose reports are regularly cited by lawyers in Starmer\u2019s former specialism \u2013 are among those who say Israel is committing genocide. (Both also say that Hamas committed war crimes on 7 October, including hostage-taking and the murder of civilians.) Yet Israel has been able to pursue its military action relatively unhindered thanks to support from its allies: the UK, certainly, but most of all the US, its principal military, financial and political backer.<\/p>\n As the dominant global power since 1945, the US played a significant role in shaping the human rights system (Eleanor Roosevelt, the former first lady, was a driving force behind the Universal Declaration) but its commitment to that system has been patchy. \u201cYou didn\u2019t have to be super radical to think that the international legal order was designed for the west,\u201d Gearty told me, but in years gone by \u201cyou could slightly pretend it wasn\u2019t\u201d. The west\u2019s support of Israel\u2019s war, he believes, has made the imbalance impossible to ignore.<\/p>\n <\/span>The UK foreign secretary, David Lammy, and Starmer, on their way to Washington in September 2024.<\/span> Photograph: Stefan Rousseau<\/p>\n Since taking office, Labour has tried to tread a fine line on Israel, between being seen to abide by international law, and continuing to support an ally it says has the right to defend itself from Hamas and hostile states such as Iran. At the same time, it has been keen not to upset the US, particularly since Trump took office. According to the two people familiar with cabinet-level discussions, there are disagreements in government about how best to approach this, analogous to the divisions over how to deal with Reform UK \u2013 a \u201cdog-eat-dog\u201d worldview, as one put it, versus a more humanitarian-minded one. Both positions are generally supportive of Israel, said the other source, but differ on people\u2019s \u201crelative strength of support for Netanyahu\u201d.<\/p>\n As ever, it\u2019s not clear exactly where the prime minister sits. But as Gabriel Pogrund and Patrick Maguire report in their recent book on Labour\u2019s return to power, Starmer has exerted tight control over Labour\u2019s position on Israel since 7 October, in contrast to issues where he has been happy to delegate. His behaviour, they write, has been driven by several motivations: horror at the Hamas attacks; a desire, at least in the early days, to show that Labour had moved on from the Corbyn years by signalling strong support for Israel; and a belief that any significant departure from the US position would be futile.<\/p>\n In opposition, this involved saying as little as possible except that Israel had a right to defend itself and that international law should be respected. In government, Labour has criticised aspects of Israel\u2019s military campaign and has affirmed the UK\u2019s support for the international criminal court\u2019s jurisdiction. (It has said that the UK would fulfil its \u201clegal obligations\u201d if the Israeli prime minister, for whom the ICC has issued an arrest warrant, visits the UK \u2013 implying, but not directly confirming, that it would carry out an arrest.) On the occasions it has broken with US policy \u2013 for instance, when the UK, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and Norway recently placed individual sanctions on two far-right Israeli ministers \u2013 it has tried to do so only in concert with other states.<\/p>\n This is accompanied by a studied (some might say lawyerly) refusal to say in public whether or not the Israeli government as a whole is breaking international law. Doing so would have big implications, since Britain may then be obliged to follow its own human rights laws and impose wider-reaching sanctions, potentially suspending its substantial trade, military cooperation and intelligence-sharing agreements with Israel. Officials may have to reveal what they knew when; among other things, it is a criminal offence for public servants to knowingly assist in war crimes overseas.<\/p>\n It has led to some erratic gestures. Most prominently, in March, Downing Street forced the foreign secretary, David Lammy, to walk back comments that by blocking aid from reaching Gaza \u2013 an act now causing mass starvation \u2013 Israel had definitely broken international law. (The official line was that Israel was only \u201cat risk\u201d of doing so.) In public, ministers have said, once again, that it is for the courts to determine whether Israel is committing genocide. But Starmer has also invoked his own legal credentials to deflect criticism. \u201cI\u2019m well aware of the definition of genocide,\u201d he snapped in a testy exchange at prime minister\u2019s questions last November, \u201cand that is why I\u2019ve never described this as [\u2026] genocide\u201d. (The international court of justice, which is considering an accusation of genocide made against Israel by South Africa, is not expected to deliver a ruling until 2027.)<\/p>\n The most delicate footwork, however, relates to weapons sales. On taking office last year, Labour announced a review of UK arms exports to Israel. Britain is one of the world\u2019s largest arms producers, with export orders worth about \u00a310bn a year, and in theory a system exists to stop them being used for human rights abuses. Manufacturers can only export weapons if the government gives them a licence to do so \u2013 although, according to a recent whistleblower, the system is too easy to manipulate.<\/p>\n At the end of August 2024, according to documents recently disclosed to the high court, Starmer personally phoned Netanyahu to warn him that the UK would be suspending 30 of 350 arms export licences. Civil servants had assessed there was a risk Israel would use these weapons to violate international law, but there was an exception. Essential parts produced by British companies for F-35 planes \u2013 the world\u2019s deadliest fighter jets, designed and made mostly in the US \u2013 would continue to be shared among the UK\u2019s allies, including Israel, since they were necessary for \u201cglobal peace and security\u201d.<\/p>\n This summer, a long-running legal challenge to that decision came to a head in the high court. Lawyers for the Palestinian human rights organisation Al-Haq argued it contravened the genocide convention, the Geneva conventions, the UN arms trade treaty and the UK\u2019s own export licensing rules. In its defence, part of the evidence for which was presented in secret, the government argued that continuing to supply the parts \u2013 which contribute to a joint programme between the UK, the US and several other Nato members, as well as favoured partners such as Israel and Saudi Arabia \u2013 was necessary to maintain a deterrent against Russia. Moreover, said the government, it was impossible for the UK to determine where the parts are distributed, since the US arms company Lockheed Martin controls many of the warehouses in which they are stored. As with so many other things, it was ultimately the US calling the shots \u2013 or, as the government\u2019s lawyers put it in more opaque language, \u201cthe US is primarily responsible for contracting with contractors\u201d.<\/p>\n On 30 June, the high court ruled in the government\u2019s favour, saying that decisions about security were a matter for the executive, not the courts. For some people I spoke to, this is just the unpleasant reality of politics. \u201cNational security interests sometimes mean that you have to do things or tolerate things that you might not otherwise be very happy about,\u201d Grieve told me. Others are less forgiving. Yasmine Ahmed of Human Rights Watch, which intervened in the case in support of Al-Haq, told me that the government\u2019s position that it can opt out of the rules risks undermining the effectiveness of key human rights treaties.<\/p>\n Even more alarming, Ahmed said, was the government\u2019s reasoning over why it was not bound to act by the genocide convention, which says states have a duty to prevent genocide if there is a serious risk of it occurring. Government lawyers argued that a state could only be said to have breached that duty if it could be definitively proven that an act of genocide had taken place \u2013 \u201ca very difficult exercise, which could take many years\u201d, said the government \u2013 in other words, only after the event, when it would be too late to stop it. \u201cThat\u2019s just a shocking position to take,\u201d Ahmed told me. \u201cIt\u2019s morally repugnant but also legally and factually wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/span>Police arrest protesters for supporting Palestine Action \u2013 a group recently proscribed under the Terrorism Act \u2013 in Manchester, 12 July 2025.<\/span> Photograph: Milo Chandler\/Alamy<\/p>\n Even supportive observers are critical of the decision to keep supplying F-35 parts, seeing it as emblematic of a wider lack of action to defend human rights in Gaza. \u201cWhat happened on 7 October [2023] was a terrible crime, but there is no justification for what is going on today in Gaza, none whatsoever,\u201d Philippe Sands told me. \u201cThe fact that it wasn\u2019t stopped long ago and that the British government has not gone further makes me extremely unhappy. Even if Britain is a friend of Israel, the role of friends is to speak truth to power.\u201d<\/p>\n Sands\u2019s fellow human rights expert Conor Gearty sympathises with the pressures Labour are under, but is critical nonetheless. \u201cStarmer, Hermer, Lammy \u2013 they\u2019re all lawyers. [Lammy is also a qualified barrister and practised law before entering politics.] They\u2019re committed to law, but they can\u2019t bear the full consequences of committing to law.\u201d A former senior diplomat who worked in Washington DC during the past decade told me that while the pressure from Trump was real, blaming the US was also an excuse British politicians often used when they wanted to avoid owning their decisions. \u201cIt\u2019s quite convenient, saying, \u2018Oh don\u2019t do that, the Americans won\u2019t like it,\u2019\u201d said the former diplomat.<\/p>\n This approach has also upset many civil servants representing the UK overseas. Earlier this year, more than 300 Foreign Office staff sent an open letter to Lammy raising fears they had become complicit in war crimes committed by Israel; in response, the department\u2019s chief civil servant told them to consider resigning. \u201cIt\u2019s quite humiliating for a lot of people,\u201d says a former civil servant who recently worked at the Foreign Office. \u201cPeople working on Russia and Ukraine are saying, how can we be demanding accountability for human rights abuses here when we\u2019re ignoring them in Gaza? We look like hypocrites.\u201d<\/p>\n The former civil servant said that when Labour took power, they were \u201chopeful that Labour would realise the value of the rule of law and work to uphold it. This didn\u2019t last. If anything, Lammy\u2019s response to the letter was more \u2018corporate computer says no\u2019 than David Cameron [his Conservative predecessor as foreign secretary]. Cameron would at least read the letter and think about a response rather than \u2018HR\u2019 it.\u201d<\/p>\n W<\/span>e\u2019ve been here before. New Labour took office in 1997 promising great things on human rights \u2013 incorporating the ECHR into law at home and promising an \u201cethical foreign policy\u201d abroad. It did the legal, procedural part, introducing the Human Rights Act and lending British support to global initiatives such as the international criminal court. But it backed away from the wider project. As the Human Rights Act came into force, it was attacked by the rightwing press. Under pressure \u2013 as the human rights expert Francesca Klug writes in her 2015 book on the subject \u2013 the Blair government abandoned a public awareness campaign extolling the benefits of the act. It also dropped plans to extend its reach to the economic sphere, which would have made issues such as a decent standard of living a matter of human rights, too, as the Universal Declaration originally envisioned. Meanwhile, Blair\u2019s enthusiastic participation in the \u201cwar on terror\u201d helped undermine the UN and led him to restrict civil liberties at home.<\/p>\n Carne Ross, a senior diplomat under the Blair government who resigned in protest at the Iraq war, told me that the travails of the Starmer government remind him of this period. \u201cThere\u2019s a sense that human rights is a luxury parties give themselves in opposition, but in government national security takes over,\u201d said Ross. \u201cIt\u2019s a false choice, though, because prioritising human rights is a greater contribution to long-term stability and ultimately security.\u201d<\/p>\n Human rights advocates have plenty of specific policy demands. But is there more the UK could do to defend the system as a whole? For Gearty, Labour\u2019s contortions reflect \u201cthe weakness that is at the core of Britain\u2019s standing in the world, which voters can never be told about, because British voters continue to believe that this country is a world power\u201d. The trouble, according to Gearty, is that these contortions only make the problem worse. \u201cBritain has little credibility for three reasons,\u201d he said. \u201cOne, it is seen as the child of America, with no independent engagement. Two, Britain is an imperial nation that has not yet addressed what imperialism meant; it still largely believes that it granted independence to grateful global south entities. And three, having left Europe, it has no strategic vision of anything.\u201d<\/p>\n Sands is slightly more optimistic. \u201cWe live in a world of double standards. So what\u2019s new? My entire life with international law, we\u2019ve lived with these kinds of situations,\u201d he says. Sands believes the threat to the postwar human rights system is real, because the world\u2019s three greatest powers \u2013 the US, Russia and China \u2013 are now all actively hostile to the project. \u201cBut in that context,\u201d he says, \u201cthe Starmer government is going against the grain. I think it\u2019s courageous.\u201d In particular, Sands adds, countries in the global south that do not want to be bullied by their larger neighbours are still strongly invested in the human rights system \u2013 and the UK has the power to support their struggle.<\/p>\n For the barrister Jamie Burton, the dual meaning of equality \u2013 economic as well as political \u2013 is key. \u201cIt\u2019s a real mistake to think about human rights as just being about technical rules, the courts and litigation,\u201d he says. \u201cThey\u2019re a description of what society is supposed to look like.\u201d For Burton, a renewed focus on economic equality would help take the sting out of the right\u2019s claims that human rights are for \u201cother\u201d people only and disadvantage ordinary British citizens. At one point, at least, Starmer was known to be sympathetic to this argument. In opposition, according to Pogrund and Maguire, he would frequently brandish a copy of the Marmot review, a landmark decade-long study on health and inequality in Britain, as an example of where Labour\u2019s attention should lie. Now? It\u2019s less clear.<\/p>\n When writing this piece, one story I heard kept coming back to mind. Earlier this year, a delegation of British Palestinians met with Starmer to ask for more aid to reach Gaza and for refugees to be allowed to join their relatives in the UK. As one of the Palestinians there described it to me, Starmer listened patiently and sensitively to their concerns, but did not propose anything new. Towards the end of the meeting, a teenage member of the group spoke up. \u201cShe said, \u2018My ambition in life is to be a human rights lawyer like you. And I was very disappointed to hear what you just said. We were expecting more.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n The Palestinian campaigner continued: \u201cI thought, that\u2019s very brave of her,\u201d he told me, adding that he was worried, at first, that she had offended their host. But he was surprised by the prime minister\u2019s reaction \u2013 or lack of it. \u201cHe looked a bit shocked, but he didn\u2019t say anything.\u201d<\/p>\n Listen to our podcasts here and sign up to the long read weekly email here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The international human rights system \u2013 the rules, principles and practices intended to ensure that states do not abuse people \u2013 is under greater threat now than at any other point since 1945. Fortunately, we in the UK couldn\u2019t wish for a better-qualified prime minister to face this challenge. Keir Starmer is a distinguished former<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12869,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[5283,6540,761,1346,6539,702,1347],"class_list":{"0":"post-12868","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-crime-justice","8":"tag-cautious","9":"tag-defending","10":"tag-human","11":"tag-keir","12":"tag-lawyer","13":"tag-rights","14":"tag-starmer"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12868","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12868"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12868\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12869"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}