Vain, pompous . . . and an oh-so superior guru of human rights

graces, Lester’s reputation is now in tatters. His punishment is the most severe for a parliamentarian since the Second World War. He will be 86 when the suspension is lifted and it’s far from certain the Lib Dems will want him back.

Anthony Lester was born into a Jewish family and studied at Cambridge. As an officer in the Royal Artillery in 1956, he refused to list his religion as Church of England rather than Jewish after his commanding officer told him it would make him less likely to be tortured if he were captured during the Suez invasion.

As a young lawyer in the 60s, Lester would test the system for racism by sending out job applications in which two fictitious applicants had identical qualifications but one was called Smith, and the other Singh. The imaginary Mr Smith was invariably more likely to be invited for interview.

In 1971 he married Catherine Wassey and they have two children. For two decades Lester was instrumental in laying the groundwork for the Human Rights Act. In his book 50 People Who Buggered Up Britain, the Mail’s sketchwriter Quentin Letts once described Lord Lester as an ‘oily barrister of wearily superior airs who is still up to no good in the House of Lords’.

He quit as adviser to Jack Straw in 2008 fearing Straw was going to water down his beloved Human Rights Act. He felt human rights had become ‘dirty words’. In parliamentary circles, the dirty words are now Lord Lester of Herne Hill.

sex pest allegations: lord lester WHEN allegations of sex harassment against Lord Lester first emerged there was stunned disbelief among the Lib Dem leadership.Lester, one of the country’s most distinguished human rights barristers, has spent a lifetime campaigning against prejudice and discrimination – especially against women.Vain and intellectually overbearing, he never tires of telling people about his pivotal role in the creation of the Human Rights Act which became a reality in the first Blair government in 1998.At party meetings Lester, who was elevated to the Upper House in 1993, expects to be heard in respectful silence. ‘He is always very grand, pompous actually, and never likes to be interrupted. He looks down on us mere mortals as his intellectual inferiors,’ said one senior Lib Dem source. For all his airs and