As I predicted last week, David Lammy’s jury curbs turned out not to be quite as draconian as the draft plans leaked to The Times indicated they would be. An old political ruse was surely in play.
I am no Mystic Meg, though. The backlash to what the deputy prime minister is proposing has turned out to be more perilous for him than many – including me – thought it would be.
Consider this social media exchange involving Karl Turner, Labour MP for Kingston upon Hull East and a qualified barrister.
‘@DavidLammy will not get this past Parliament,’ thundered Turner on X. ‘We know it is a terrible idea and he knows full well that there is enough of us that will oppose this, across the political divides, very hard. Stop it now before this becomes another embarrassing U-turn for this government.’
To which Michael Gove – former lord chancellor and now Spectator editor – responded with just one word: ‘Quite’.
Turner has never once voted against the Labour whip in 15 years as an MP, but says he will do so this time. When arch-loyalists break ranks like that, the whips have a big problem. Lord chancellor Lammy – Gove’s successor but 10, would you believe – is clearly facing the political fight of his life.
The erasure of hard-won rights is something of a theme of this week’s issue (while, I feel bound to note, we contemplate the billions to be spent on digital ID cards and facial recognition cameras). In our main feature, Fiona Scolding KC traces the emergence of the European Convention from the ashes of war, posing an uncomfortable question: ‘Is it too late to make the case for human rights?’. Ms Scolding makes that case eloquently.
Another silk, Baroness Helena Kennedy, made a cogent point about why restricting the right to a jury trial is especially deplorable, even though almost all of us will never stand in a dock. ‘This is one of the few places where the public participate in an institution that really matters,’ she lamented on BBC’s Newsnight.
At a time when the public is already desperately alienated from its tribunes at Westminster, faith in liberal democracy itself can only be further eroded.
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