Obiter once strolled up Downing Street to Number Ten, hoping to catch sight of the PM (Jim Callaghan, as if you care). Our school party also gambolled freely through parliament, challenged only at the very threshold of the Commons chamber by an (unarmed) attendant.

It was a more innocent age. Today, visitors must negotiate all the grim apparatus of the security state before they are allowed into the vicinity of their tribunes. On a glacial Tuesday evening, it took an hour to gain entry to a reception honouring Law for Change, an organisation which funds public interest legal cases.

There has to be a better way, surely. Cancel HS2 and buy a few more airport scanners?

Mein host for the event was justice committee chair Andy Slaughter MP, while the star turns were attorney general Lord Hermer and justice minister Sarah Sackman MP.

Any hints that the people’s party is presently a tad beleaguered were notably absent. There was much boosterish talk of flagship rights legislation, while both ministers paid lavish tribute to ‘Keir’.

Hardly surprising, really. Hermer and Sackman were not exactly playing to a hostile crowd, as the AG wryly conceded. ‘I’m probably the most right-wing person here!’ he joshed.

 

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