Keir Starmer Used His Power to Trample on Human Rights
Keir Starmer marketed himself as a human rights lawyer who stood up for the downtrodden. As Britain’s prime minister, he showed nothing but contempt for human rights law, and he now leaves behind a disgraceful record of authoritarian policies.
Don’t feel sorry for Keir Starmer as he slithers his way out of Downing Street — save your sympathy for the people whose rights he dismissed so casually, from Israel’s victims in Gaza to domestic protesters against genocide and environmental destruction. (Peter Nicholls / Getty Images)
Keir Starmer made a bold claim to his biographer Tom Baldwin: “There is no version of my life that does not largely revolve around me being a human rights lawyer.” In a political career defined by serial mendacity, this stands out as one of the biggest con jobs.
Starmer marketed himself as a champion of human rights and the laws that protect them. Once installed as Labour leader, he went out of his way to undermine the principles that he claimed to uphold.
Before he became a Labour MP, Starmer served as Britain’s director of public prosecutions, and his track record in that post gave us a much better sense of what to expect from his leadership than his early legal career. Without realizing what they were doing, Labour members selected a bureaucrat of the state security machine, a plodding conformist for whom raison d’état is the supreme law.
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