According to our chief legal officer, Attorney General Lord Hermer, anyone who thinks Britain should withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) is a Nazi.
That made me aware of another aspect of my personality, for I too hold that view. I don’t know whether Lord Hermer regards this belief as a sufficient condition for being a full-fledged National Socialist, but if he does, I’m half a step removed from buying a brown shirt and screaming “Sieg heil!”.
Lord Hermer described people like me as those singing a siren song that doesn’t even have any novelty appeal. “This is not a new song,” he explained.
“The claim that international law is fine as far as it goes, but can be put aside when the conditions change, is a claim that was made in the early 1930s by ‘realist’ jurists in Germany most notably Carl Schmitt, whose central thesis was in essence the claim that state power is all that counts, not law.”
Schmitt was indeed a Nazi philosopher, although one not without certain nuances. His political thought was authoritarian and statist, a platform from which he criticised liberal democracy. Schmitt came up with the notion of a “state of exception”, essentially meaning that the law laid down by the ruler may supersede the rule of law.
He became a hugely influential political and legal philosopher, but characteristically his influence is now mostly felt on the intellectual Left, through such Frankfurters as Benjamin and Adorno. At this point I become confused.
Specifically, I can’t decide how unimpeachable my Nazi credentials are. Yes, I think Britain should leave the ECHR – mea culpa, guilty as charged. And yes, I too criticise liberal democracy at times – another mea culpa.
Yet I know for a fact that I’m not a statist. In fact, my problem with liberal democracy is precisely that it inexorably leads to growing political centralisation and hence greater state power. And I certainly don’t believe that the government and its leaders should be exempt from the rule of law.
Oh yes, I almost forgot – I despise every word ever uttered by any member of the Frankfurt School. I’m mildly surprised though that these thinkers, most of whom were Jewish, found so much in common with Carl Schmitt, a rank anti-Semite. Statist anti-Western ideology must trump even tribal loyalties then.
So can I please be absolved of the charge of Nazism? I believe in a small state whose power is limited by law. Schmitt didn’t. I also believe in individual sovereignty vested in, but not usurped by, a sovereign parliament. Schmitt didn’t. I believe not in a strong leader but in a strong society. Schmitt didn’t.
Yes, his notion of ‘exception’ isn’t without merit, as long as the outer limits of exception are set by law and are so narrow as to exclude peacetime altogether.
At wartime, the central government may have to assume emergency powers outside the rule of law, and that’s where Schmitt’s ‘realism’ is justified. At all other times, however, his realism is tantamount to statism run riot, which is rather the opposite of my own political thought.
You could see me wipe my brow even as we speak. I’m not a Nazi after all, this is one conclusion I gratefully reach. Another conclusion is that Lord Hermer is a half-witted demagogue who doesn’t have a clue about Britain’s constitution, which is an unfortunate lapse for someone in his position.
People who, like me, want Britain to leave the ECHR aren’t insisting “that state power is all that counts, not law”. On the contrary, the opposite view that law is all that counts, not state power, is much closer to our convictions. However, we believe that the law that counts should be laid down by our sovereign parliament accountable to the British people, not by a socialist supranational bureaucracy accountable only to itself.
In fact, by committing Britain to the yoke of the ECHR, the state increases its power pari passu with its diminishing accountability. The outcome of that arrangement is paradoxically much closer to Schmitt’s idea of a state, in spirit at any rate.
Like all Leftist demagogues, Lord Hermer tries to make up for his understated intellectual ability with fiery rhetoric designed to stigmatise, not to persuade. That lot use words like ‘Nazi’ or ‘fascist’ to describe anyone they don’t like, the vermin mostly found on the political Right.
That’s like simpleminded conservatives branding every liberal a communist, although there the distance between a communist and, say, Lord Hermer is shorter than that between a constitutional monarchist and a Nazi.
He also equated the ECHR with international law, in essence saying that leaving the former means refusing to recognise the latter. That’s like equating the EU with Europe, as in “If you are a Remainer, you hate Europe”.
I heard that charge levelled at me by a chap who hadn’t crossed the Channel in 40 years, didn’t know a word in any European language, was ignorant of European culture – and yet called himself a European, unlike me. “How are you any more European than me?” I asked, to which he replied: “You are a Remainer”. The argument had thus come full circle, and that circle was truly vicious.
International law comes not from a bunch of Continental jurists banging their heads together but from an intricate system of treaties, blocs and alliances – and of course from the Western concept of legality that goes back to the book I doubt Lord Hermer has ever clapped his eyes on.
Historically speaking, Britain has nothing to learn about human rights from the French, Germans et al., whose own relatively recent record in that department is less than exemplary. This view, and I realise Lord Hermer will be surprised, is fully compatible with our ancient constitution.
If he persists with bandying ‘fascist’ and ‘Nazi’ about, Lord Hermer ought to be reminded of the old saying about a teapot and a kettle. And, to make sure no cliché is left unused, what goes around comes around.
International Law is a good thing, for the reasons you indicate. What we “Nazis” oppose is Supra-national Law, which amounts to the interference of some nations in the domestic affairs of others. The Twentieth Century gave us an ugly but useful word for what Lord Hermer sees as the proper relations between the UK and the European courts, and that word is “Finlandization”.
By the way, in the adage it’s a pot, not a teapot. In simpler but happier times, pots and kettles were both blackened by being heated over an open fire. But a teapot, like Lord Hermer, would suffer by being heated over a open fire, and nobody wants either a teapot or Lord Hermer to suffer. Moreover, a burnt teapot would become useless, and Lord Hermer differs significantly from a teapot in that he wouldn’t become useless.
I stand corrected on the idiom. It’s just that everybody says ‘teapot’, which I suppose proves it’s wrong.
If everybody you know says “teapot”, you must know some very strange people.
It occurs to me that Lord Hermer differs from a teapot in more ways than occurred to me earlier. For instance, what issues from his spout is less delightful and refreshing than tea.
But if, on the other hand, Lord Hermer chooses to self-identify as a teapot, it’s evident that the ECHR protects his human right to do so, which makes me a criminal. I await the knock on the door before dawn.