The attorney general has said he regrets “clumsy” remarks in which he compared calls for the UK to depart from international law and arguments made in 1930s Germany.
In a speech on Thursday, Lord Hermer criticised politicians who argue the UK should abandon “the constraints of international law in favour of raw power”.
He said similar claims had been made by legal theorists in Germany in the years before the Nazis came to power.
Tory leader Kemi Badenoch accused him of “calling people who disagree with him Nazis,” and urged the prime minister to sack him.
A spokesperson for Lord Hermer said he rejected “the characterisation of his speech by the Conservatives”.
But they added the Labour peer “acknowledges though that his choice of words was clumsy and regrets having used this reference”.
They added that the speech was aimed at “defending international law which underpins our security, protects against threats from aggressive states like Russia and helps tackle organised immigration crime”.
In a speech at the Royal United Services Institute think tank, Lord Hermer said the Labour government wanted to combine a “pragmatic approach to the UK’s national interests with a principled commitment to a rules-based international order”.
He said the approach was “a rejection of the siren song that can sadly now be heard in the Palace of Westminster, and in some spectrums of the media, that Britain abandons the constraints of international law in favour of raw power”.
Lord Hermer added: “This is not a new song.
“The claim that international law is fine as far as it goes, but can be put aside when 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.
“Because of the experience of what followed in 1933, far-sighted individuals rebuilt and transformed the institutions of international law, as well as internal constitutional law.”
Adolf Hitler became German chancellor in 1933.
Carl Schmitt, a German legal scholar, was a supporter of the Nazi Party who sought to justify Hitler’s policies in his writings on legal and political theory.
The Conservatives and Reform UK have been critical of some elements of international law and the courts that enforce it.
For example, some politicians from these parties have called for the UK to withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), an international treaty which sets out the rights and freedoms people are entitled to in signatory countries, including the UK.
Critics of the ECHR say it hampers the UK’s ability to deal with migration issues, including deporting people who cross the English Channel on small boats.
Badenoch, who has previously suggested the UK would have to leave the ECHR if it stops the country from doing “what is right”, said Lord Hermer had shown “appalling judgement” in his speech.
“Now he’s calling people who disagree with him Nazis,” she added.
“This isn’t just embarrassing, it’s dangerous. Hermer doesn’t understand government.
“If Keir Starmer had any backbone, he’d sack him.”
Reform UK’s deputy leader Richard Tice said Lord Hermer should apologise.
“If anyone on the right of politics used his language, there would be outrage,” Tice posted on social media.
“He has shown himself as unfit to be attorney general.”
