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The furore over Lord Hermer’s speech at the Royal United Services Institute offers a sharp reminder of just how brittle UK political discourse has become—and how easily good-faith argument can be twisted into headline outrage.

At the heart of the controversy is a reference—yes-to Nazi Germany.

The Labour Attorney General invoked the name of Carl Schmitt, a German legal theorist whose arguments in the early 1930s laid intellectual groundwork for the rise of authoritarianism.

Hermer’s point was that calls to discard international law in favour of “raw power” echo similar justifications made in Weimar Germany, and that those legal arguments had catastrophic consequences.

This wasn’t a throwaway slur, nor was it a case of calling today’s Conservatives or Reform UK “Nazis.”

It was a historical analogy, a caution rooted in precedent.

But in today’s reactionary climate, that nuance was quickly flattened.

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Context or comparison? What did Hermer actually say?

Hermer’s critics, led by Kemi Badenoch and Richard Tice, rushed to accuse him of “calling people Nazis” and exhibiting “appalling judgement.”

Tice demanded an apology.

Badenoch, indignation glands glowing, insisted Hermer didn’t “understand government.”

Both called on Keir Starmer to sack him.

But Hermer wasn’t referencing Hitler.

He was referencing a legal philosophy—Schmitt’s belief that sovereign power should override legal constraint—as a warning against the current drift in right-wing thinking.

That’s a long way from branding your opponents as goose-stepping fascists.

It was a reminder that when law is abandoned for the sake of political convenience, history does not smile kindly.

The comparison may have been clumsy, as Hermer himself conceded – but was it inappropriate?

Only if we ignore the content of his argument and react solely to the trigger of a 1930s reference.

Godwin’s Law and the perils of political amnesia

Godwin’s Law suggests that as any argument continues, the likelihood of a comparison to Hitler or the Nazis approaches certainty.

Invoking it here might imply that Hermer had run out of ideas.

But that would be unfair.

Hermer wasn’t cheapening debate by dragging in the Third Reich; he was raising a historically grounded concern. Sometimes history matters.

The danger in applying Godwin’s Law indiscriminately is that it can become a gag order—a way of dismissing any historical comparison with fascism, no matter how relevant.

But if we can’t reference the 1930s when discussing the erosion of legal norms, what can we reference?

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The real over-reaction: populist politics as performance

Rather than engage with the core of Hermer’s speech—a defence of international law as a safeguard against tyranny and state overreach—his opponents chose instead to perform outrage.

And that is exactly what it was: performance.

The speech’s content was clear.

Hermer spoke of defending “a rules-based international order,” rejecting “raw power,” and confronting arguments gaining traction in some Westminster corners about ditching legal constraints when politically inconvenient.

He didn’t name names, but it’s not hard to see the reference: the push to abandon the European Convention on Human Rights, particularly over the Channel migrant crisis, is a live debate.

Hermer was arguing for principle over populism, not engaging in name-calling.

Historical references: off-limits for the Left, free rein for the Right?

There’s also an unmistakable whiff of hypocrisy in the backlash.

Where was this sensitivity when right-wing commentators likened the EU to Nazi Germany during Brexit?

Or when lockdown policies were denounced as authoritarian tyranny?

Or when “globalist” conspiracies—the same ones trafficked by fascists in the 1930s—are given air by some populist figures?

These rhetorical flourishes rarely elicit the same moral panic from the political right.

It seems historical analogy is only “dangerous” when it cuts the other way.

What we really need: not restraint, but clarity

So what should be the takeaway? That everyone should tone it down? Perhaps. But calls for restraint risk becoming bland demands for consensus in a moment that needs principled confrontation.

Better instead to ask for clarity.

If international law is to be rewritten or abandoned, let’s have that debate in the open—honestly, not through performative outrage.

Let those who favour unilateral state power over treaty commitments explain why that’s preferable, and what protections they propose in return.

And if a government lawyer—especially one with Hermer’s legal pedigree—warns that such a course has dangerous precedents, that warning should be debated, not distorted.

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Final thought: don’t shoot the historian

To warn about Carl Schmitt is not to cry wolf.

It’s to say that ideas matter—and that the collapse of law doesn’t begin with tanks or uniforms.

It begins when politicians and theorists say: the law is inconvenient, and power must come first.

In 1930s Germany, that was Carl Schmitt’s argument. In 2020s Britain, it seems pointing this out is the real scandal.

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