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The UK government’s top lawyer has attacked Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch’s suggestion that Britain prepare to leave the European Convention on Human Rights, arguing that quitting international treaties would provide “succour to [Vladimir] Putin”.

Attorney-general Richard Hermer on Thursday defended the need for the government to abide by international law, saying that failure to do so would bolster those who wished to undermine the west.

In a lecture to the Royal United Services Institute, a defence think-tank, Hermer said governments had to remember the option of reforming treaties such as the ECHR, at a time when the government is struggling to address issues such as irregular migration.

“States agreeing to treaties some time ago did not give an open-ended licence for international rules to be ever more expansively interpreted or for institutions to adopt a position of blindness or indifference to public sentiment in their member states,” Hermer said, adding that “international law cannot and must not replace politics”.

But he warned that Badenoch’s call for all of Britain’s international agreements to be reviewed was “not simply hopelessly naive but dangerous”.

“I do not question for a moment the good faith, let alone patriotism, of the pseudo-realists, but their arguments if ever adopted would provide succour to Putin,” he said.

People close to the attorney-general — who was appointed by Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, a fellow human rights lawyer and close friend — emphasised that he was not attacking the ECHR or suggesting the abolition of Article 8, which governs the right to family life and privacy.

Article 8 has been heavily criticised by the Conservatives for sometimes stopping deportations of legal and irregular immigrants who have been convicted of crimes in the UK.

“The attorney-general is a strong and enthusiastic supporter of the court and convention,” said one ally of Hermer. “He sees no contradiction between this and a strong belief reform is possible and desirable.”

Starmer last year told a meeting of the European Political Community at Blenheim Palace that Britain “will never withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights”, which was first signed in 1950 and has been incorporated into UK law since 1998.

Critics have hit out at Hermer as a “lefty lawyer”, accusing him of prioritising international law over Britain’s national interest in the UK’s deal to hand sovereignty of the Chagos Islands back to Mauritius.

Labour peer Lord Maurice Glasman in February called for Hermer to be removed from his post, describing him as “the absolute archetype of an arrogant, progressive fool who thinks that law is a replacement for politics”.

But announcing the accord with Mauritius last week, Starmer said one reason for signing it was to avoid Britain being liable to international legal challenge over its control of the Indian Ocean archipelago.

Hermer on Thursday said the government’s position on treaties was one of “progressive realism”, a doctrine first put forward by foreign secretary David Lammy and his team.

The idea that adherence to international law and treaties undermined national sovereignty was misguided, he said.

“Without international law there would be no state sovereignty, only the emptiness of that word in a world where hunks could be ripped off borders and every dispute be settled by the force of the strong,” Hermer added.