Imagine their panic, the sudden rush of adrenaline. It was May 14, 2004, and a patrol of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders were in some dodgy territory near Amarah in southern Iraq – and they were ambushed.
They came under fire from about 100 soldiers of the Mahdi army, a brutal group of insurgents trained and funded by Iran’s Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.
The position of the British soldiers was bad. Their communications were down. The battle lasted three hours and, for the first time in decades, British troops were obliged to fix bayonets and to charge across open ground.
It was bravery that was ultimately rewarded with victory. Though several were wounded, British forces ended up killing 28 of the enemy and scattering the rest. The Battle of Danny Boy – as it was called after a local checkpoint – was a heroic engagement, and one of the UK soldiers was later, rightly, awarded the Military Cross.
The smoke of battle had hardly cleared, however, before Left-wing lawyers in London started to accuse these men of war crimes. It was a ruthless, cynical and dishonest campaign that exploited the insanity of human rights law to ruin the lives of brave and innocent people.
An ambulance-chasing solicitor called Phil Shiner – now a convicted criminal – sent paid intermediaries to Iraq, to find anyone who felt that their human rights had been abused; and it didn’t take long to build the case.
By February 2008, Shiner had enough to go public, and he gave a press conference in which he accused the heroes of Danny Boy of capturing, torturing and killing innocent Iraqi civilians. The gallant veterans of Danny Boy were dragged through hell, for years, over false allegations.
The claims of UK war crimes were so shocking to the British public that in 2009 the Labour government set up what became known as the Al-Sweady Inquiry – after one of the alleged victims. After five years and up to £31 million in costs, the whole thing collapsed.
It was a pack of lies. There were no summary executions. There was no torture. The claimants were not innocent Iraqi civilians, as they claimed. They weren’t out shopping for yoghurt or tending to their crops. They were lying, cozening members of the Mahdi Army, exploiting the extraordinary willingness of the British legal system to attack and undermine the very people who keep our country free.
The gallant veterans of Danny Boy were dragged through hell, for years, over false allegations. Worse, it is now clear that Shiner and his ambulance-chasing colleagues were warned – with ever-increasing certainty – that the allegations were false.
And the most shameful and disgusting aspect of the whole affair is that Shiner’s legal counsel – the man who advised him how to handle the case – is now serving as a key Cabinet minister, as Attorney General, in Starmer’s government.
Thanks to the disclosure of thousands of documents, we know that Richard, Lord Hermer, was at the heart of these calumnies – and actually advised Shiner & Co how to make the most of them. The crucial email is from February 17, 2008. You need to make more of the summary executions, he says. You need to get this on the Today programme – and, with breathtaking cynicism, he recommends leaving some wriggle room in case it turns out not to be true. He egged them on. He hyped it up – even though he obviously suspected already that the case might not be well-founded.
It now turns out that it was Hermer who was the impresario behind that infamous press conference, and who encouraged Shiner to make accusations about British Armed Forces – even though doubts were clearly already surfacing.
When the whole thing was on the point of disintegrating, and the fraud was surely becoming obvious, Hermer refused to give up, according to a new cache of 25,000 documents. He calculated that the MoD could still be bullied into paying settlements to the Mahdi Army soldiers, even though their claims were worthless.
He urged the solicitors to pursue the Army for hundreds of thousands of pounds, for allegations that were deeply discrediting to the UK, and that were completely without foundation and which – this is the crucial point – he by now must have suspected were almost certainly without foundation.
Lord Hermer’s spokesman has said that any suggestion he acted for individuals with knowledge that their claims were false is ‘categorically untrue’. But to me his behaviour looks not just shameful but positively treasonable, consciously acting against the interests of this country and of its armed services.
He didn’t have to take this case, against British troops. He did it on a no-win, no-fee basis because, I believe, he instinctively sympathised with the objective – the humiliation of his own country. Lord Hermer didn’t have to take this case, against British troops. He instinctively sympathised with the objective – the humiliation of his own country, writes Boris Johnson 'Starmer, Shiner, Hermer: they are all of them part of a cabal of Left-wing lawyers whose starting point is that Britain is in the wrong'.
Why is this man still in the Government? The answer is that Hermer is Starmer’s most dependable political ally and closest ideological kinsman – and the result is that as a legal team they are now leading the most unpatriotic government in British history.
It was Starmer and Hermer, working together in the mid-2000s, who helped expand the remit of the European Convention on Human Rights so that it could be applied to the actions of UK forces overseas. Starmer not only took a critical role in developing this concept of lawfare – he actually co-wrote a book with his crooked chum Phil Shiner, on the Iraq War and International Law (which is still available).
Starmer, Shiner, Hermer: they are all of them part of a cabal of Left-wing lawyers whose starting point is that Britain is in the wrong. They believe implicitly that if British troops are sent overseas, they will be engaged in the abuse of human rights; and no matter how slender or even fallacious the evidence may be, they will be happy to persecute these soldiers to the end of their days.
Even now, the Starmer government is removing the protections (put in by the government I led) for UK Northern Ireland veterans, so that old, failed prosecutions can be re-started against men in their 80s – who were once just frightened young men, trying to do their duty on the streets of Londonderry and Belfast – and so that they can face more pointless years of legal misery and uncertainty.
This Government is recklessly corroding the bond of trust between armed services and the state. It is no wonder SAS soldiers are resigning in droves. It is no wonder we struggle to recruit. How can you send people into battle if they think they are going to face prosecution and decades of misery, just for trying to protect themselves and their comrades and defend their country?
How can we hope for more powerful and effective Armed Forces if we have to waste billions on lawfare? Starmer and Hermer are making it all but impossible for Britain to fight, at a time when we desperately need to build up our defences. We need now to restore protections for Northern Ireland veterans. We need to stop the ridiculous and one-sided application of human rights law to UK forces overseas.
All those lying Iraqis, recruited and funded by Phil Shiner – were they ever prosecuted for trying to fleece the UK taxpayer, or to ruin the lives of innocent British soldiers? Of course not. How the hell could we arrest them, even if we found them?
As for the lefty lawyers behind it all, and who run the Government, well, it looks as though Starmer will go before too long. But on the basis of his vomit-inducing willingness to denigrate brave British troops whom he was warned were almost certainly innocent, I believe Hermer should go today.
