Tearing up the ‘lefty lawyers’ script

The continuing use of the ‘lefty lawyer’ label by the government looks set to become a feature of the long campaign leading to the next election.

It is seriously disappointing that our supposedly calm and technocratic current Prime Minister has seen fit to carry over the insult from two Prime Ministers ago. It was revived at Prime Minister’s questions last week in connection with opposition to the government’s immigration policy, and has appeared in recent Conservative Party campaign e-mails on the same topic.

This is bad news for our profession for a number of reasons.

First, our Prime Minister does not strike me as someone who believes such nonsense. I have no clue as to his real character, but it does not seem to me that insults are his natural response. So he has presumably been told by focus groups that the ‘lefty lawyer’ label goes down well. There is electoral appeal in it, and so it will continue.

Second, the government’s immigration policy is widely accepted to be performance politics. The Home Secretary was obliged to attach a statement to the Illegal Migration Bill under Section 19 (1) (b) of the Human Rights Act 1988, making it clear that although she was unable to make a statement of compatibility of the bill with the HRA, the government nevertheless wishes to proceed. In this melodramatic performance, the government script is that it is virtuously trying to deal with people-smugglers, whereas ‘lefty lawyers’ are evil-doers aiding the people-smugglers.

Since the government has ready and daily access to the media in which to perform its heart-wrenching role, we lawyers struggle at a disadvantage, because we have hardly any platforms in which to counter the false stereotype in which we have been cast.

Third, the leader of the opposition is a lawyer and from the left (certainly as regards this government). Barring an unforeseen development, he is likely to lead the Labour Party into the next election. Therefore, given that the label is apparently electoral catnip, we can anticipate that ‘lefty lawyers’ will be a feature of this long election campaign, in which the Illegal Migration Bill will doubtless play a rather prominent part, to show that the government is taking decisive and compassionate action.

These are overwhelming obstacles to being able to counter our unwelcome label.

One route is to do like the Bar and issue a strong statement – ‘lawyers should not be associated with the causes of their clients’, it is ‘a startling and regrettable ignorance from the Prime Minister’, and so on. We can all applaud the sentiments, and feel much better. But we kid ourselves if we think the government is not rather pleased by such a response, or that there has been the slightest dent in the electorate’s views.

Given that this is going to be a long and vigorous campaign, we need to do better.

The Law Society is not party political, and exists, among other reasons, to promote the role of solicitors, not to oppose bills for political reasons. It has responded to the Illegal Migration Bill within its usual framework of the rule of law and access to justice. It did not say a word in its statement about the ‘lefty lawyer’ rhetoric, which does not constitute a formal part of the bill’s contents.

But where a bill is launched specifically to cast solicitors – or at any rate certain solicitors - wrongly as bad actors, even though nothing is said about that in its contents, what is the most effective counter-measure?

One hope is that external circumstances may turn the tables on the scripted outcome. For instance, there may be unlikely saviours waiting in the wings, like Gary Lineker’s Twitter account. But has the Gary Lineker incident had any impact on electors’ view of the bill, or merely entrenched existing views more deeply? Other surprising incidents may follow.

However, that argues that we should be passive, and await the outcome of events.

There are possible measures we could take, but none are easy or guaranteed not to backfire.

For instance, we could highlight the real work of an immigration solicitor, with a real client who has escaped from torture or other persecution.

Or we could posit the position of a supposed ‘righty lawyer’ faced with an asylum seeker. What is that lawyer supposed to do - to say ‘You have a case for claiming asylum, but I think that you should not be allowed to come here on a boat over the Channel, and so I will not advise you on it’?

The Law Society is trying hard to engage its members in its work. Many heads are better than one. We should all be thinking of effective ways to counter the nonsensical insult that disgraceful ‘lefty lawyers’ are standing in the way of a heroic government.