As head of his chambers for 20 years, I can attest that Starmer’s integrity was beyond reproach. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak accused him in their first TV debate of acting for terrorists, which of course he did, arguing their points of law on appeal. Under the “cab rank” ethical rule, barristers are bound to take anyone who wants to hire them. Sunak was taken to task by The Times, which pointed out that I was a stickler for the rule and would not have allowed him to flout it by refusing to act for the demonised.
Sunak is a desperate man: even his ministers (most of whom are likely to lose their seats) are accepting defeat. But wait: he has one champion who has ridden to his rescue. None other than Tony Abbott, who writes in The Times that Britain, under Starmer, will have “the worst government in its history” (has he ever never heard of Liz Truss?) based on Starmer’s “emissions obsession” (that is, he wants to tackle climate change), his “compassion for the poor” (only Abbott could think that a bad thing) and that he might “slink back into the EU”. Since Brexit has been the source of so many British woes, most voters would welcome some slinking.
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In reality, 14 years of Conservative governance have left the country unimpressed and depressed. An obsession with appointing “people like us” to all public bodies has left the nation run by amateurs, incompetents and some who are visibly corrupt (for example, with the COVID contracts). Tory ministers, now jostling to succeed Sunak when he resigns after “Starmaggedon” next month, are all second rate while that genial racist Nigel Farage is doing his best to destroy the party by standing for its right-wing rival.
How will Starmer’s government begin to repair the damage? It will have much more respect for expertise and professionalism, and for a civil service free from political preferment. Starmer will continue to be cautious on foreign policy – he alienated many in his own party by supporting Joe Biden over Gaza, but he is likely to follow other European countries (and infuriate Israel) by accepting Palestinian statehood. And he will certainly not criticise the International Criminal Court prosecutor for seeking an arrest warrant against Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. He might even agree to the return of the Parthenon marbles, in a deal offered by the Greek prime minister whom Sunak stupidly refused to meet.
At every level, Starmer’s decision-making will be informed by a fidelity to human rights principles, which he believes to be “capable of contributing to the realisation of progressive change”. Indeed, he credits the Human Rights Act as leading him into politics – “it gave me a method, a structure and a framework by which I would test propositions”. Perhaps he would explain these and other advantages to Australian conservatives who virulently opposed Australians having their own human rights charter.
Starmer does not have the charisma of Boris Johnson or Tony Blair, but charisma in politicians is much overrated. He has something of the workaholism of former Labour PM Harold Wilson and the intense seriousness of another ex-PM, Clement Attlee, but dare I suggest that he has some of the qualities of that greatest of all liberal reformers, William Gladstone. That possibility should terrify the Tories. Gladstone was elected as prime minister four times.
Geoffrey Robertson is author of The Statute of Liberty: How Australians Can Take Back Their Rights.
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