Conservative attacks on “lefty lawyers” blamed for frustrating the government’s immigration policy date back to the era of Boris Johnson’s government, with Priti Patel as home secretary. However, Rishi Sunak and his senior colleagues have not shied away from this language either.
Here’s how Tory criticisms of legal professionals have developed over the past three years.
August 2020
A Home Office video about immigration referred to “activist lawyers” challenging asylum decisions. At the time, the Bar Council released a statement criticising the video, with the then chair, Amanda Pinto QC, saying: “Irresponsible, misleading communications from the government, around the job that lawyers do in the public interest, are extremely damaging to our society.”
October 2020
Boris Johnson appeared to coin the phrase “lefty human rights lawyers” and it has been part of the political lexicon of the right since then. In his party conference speech, the then prime minister said he wanted to stop “the whole criminal justice system from being hamstrung by what the home secretary would doubtless – and rightly – call the lefty human rights lawyers, and other do-gooders”. The Bar Council said this was “shocking and troubling”.
July 2021
After a nine-month hiatus, Johnson restarted his criticism of legal professionals, saying on LBC: “The Labour opposition has consistently taken the side of, I’m afraid, leftwing criminal justice lawyers against, I believe, the interests of the public.”
May 2022
On the local election campaign trail, Johnson said of his plan to deport some asylum seekers to Rwanda: “Yes, of course there are going to be legal eagles, liberal left lawyers who will try to make this difficult.”
June 2022
As challenges to the government’s Rwanda plan got under way, Boris Johnson claimed at a cabinet meeting that lawyers representing them were “abetting the work of criminal gangs”. In response, there was a joint Bar Council and Law Society statement calling on the prime minister to stop the attacks.
August 2022
During the first Conservative leadership contest after Johnson resigned, Sunak turned to the “lefty lawyer” phrase used by his predecessor. The prime minister told GB News: “We’ve got to change the definition of asylum. At the moment we use the ECHR, the European definition, and that is very broad. It’s become broader. Over time it’s exploited by lefty lawyers for lots of spurious reasons to keep people here.”
November 2022
Andrea Jenkyns, a Conservative education minister at the time, wrote to the home secretary about the Rwanda plan, saying: “You will know that this fair and proportionate plan was brought to a halt by anti-British activist lawyers and a left-leaning media who sought to frustrate the government’s good work in this area.”
December 2022
The Tory MP Marco Longhi asked the prime minister in the Commons: “If the prime minister’s future legislation is indeed scuppered by an intervention by the judiciary or human rights activists’ lawyers, will he have the political will to still force it through and implement what he intends to do?”
March 2023
An email went to Conservative party members in the home secretary’s name using the phrase “an activist blob of leftwing lawyers”. Suella Braverman later said she had not approved the use of the phrase and the party said it would review its clearance processes.
Sunak called Keir Starmer “just another lefty lawyer” at PMQs and the Bar Council issued a statement describing it as “a startling and regrettable ignorance about the role of lawyers”.
In the same month, an email from the Conservative party vice-chair, Lee Anderson, to members said: “Labour MPs and leftwing lawyers decided to fight our new laws; because they have no plan of their own to stop the boats.”
June 2023
The former prime minister Liz Truss took up the baton, telling GB News: “Fundamentally, it’s about taking on the lefty lawyers who are constantly on the phone to illegal migrants trying to keep them in the United Kingdom.”
August 2023
Jacqueline McKenzie, a partner at Leigh Day, was named in a Conservative party dossier criticising Labour for being linked to her because she has represented asylum seekers challenging deportation decisions. She said the briefing was “underpinned by racism and misogyny”, inaccurate and calculated to whip up ill-feeling. McKenzie was supported by the Law Society and Bar Council. The Conservatives said lawyers should not be exempt from criticism.
