The Very Model of a Dodgy Human Rights Lawyer

Sometimes a mundane event can carry an important symbolic moral and political meaning. The headline in today’s Law Society Gazette, “Dishonest Shiner Struck Off”, at one level refers to just one more case of a grubby little ambulance-chasing shyster lawyer being banned from practising because he had dishonestly touted for business.

But Phil Shiner was no ordinary crooked lawyer. He was a left-wing icon. He was one of Britain’s leading “heroic” human rights lawyers, a committed socialist who had devoted his career to exposing and inventing the “wrongdoings” of British soldiers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. The liberal Left establishment stood up for him almost to the very end, saying that he was the victim of a conspiracy between the army, the Ministry of Defence and the right-wing press. What will they say now that he has been utterly discredited by an impartial solicitors’ disciplinary tribunal after a thorough investigation by the Solicitors’ Regulation…