Respecting your elders: the freshly installed Lord Chancellor, Jack Straw, was quick to cosy up to the judiciary at the annual judges dinner hosted by the Lord Mayor of London earlier this month.


The first Lord Chancellor to sit in the Commons, Mr Straw vowed to 'do everything I can' to meet his oath to ensure there are proper resources for the courts - one of the judges' principal grumbles about the establishment of the Ministry of Justice.



'Unusually for a government which has been charged by its critics with adding over 3,000 new criminal offences to the statue book, some by inadvertence, no explicit criminal sanction, like life with hard labour, has been created for any Lord Chancellor who fails in this duty,' he said.



'But, of course, I recognise its importance. I have already sent the Chancellor of the Exchequer (Alistair Darling) a highlighted version of the oath, along with a comradely reminder that my office pre-dates his by at least five centuries (his being a mere fourteenth century parvenu) and that it is I, not he, who signs the warrant of the Constable of the Tower.' Let's hope this brazen one-upmanship is a taste of things to come.