How to stop Gerry Adams’s taxpayer-funded pay day

The government’s fealty to human rights law is not in doubt. Still, one might have hoped that the human rights lawyers who dominate this government – the Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer KC and the Attorney General, Lord Hermer KC – would handle human rights law effectively, distinguishing weak from strong arguments and making a reasonable case for our national interest. The unfolding debacle in relation to cession of the Chagos Islands shows that this is not so. In bending heaven and earth to agree a treaty of cession with Mauritius before the looming change of political leadership in the United States, the government seems to have undersold the UK’s existing legal position, which is in fact strong, and to be fretful about litigation yet to come, to which the UK does not have to consent.

Another recent government decision betrays the same hyper-legalist disposition, sacrificing good legal arguments and practical considerations on the altar of polite legal opinion. However,