The fuss over Liz Truss’s suitability as lord chancellor rumbled on as the Gazette went to press, with the redoubtable Baroness Kennedy of the Shaws laying into her colleague on the red benches Lord Falconer of Thoroton for creating ‘this dog’s breakfast’ of a political lord chancellorship in the first place.

But has an even greater scandal flown under the radar? Obiter has been alerted to the disturbing news that the minister charged with civil justice and legal services regulation is none other than: a Scot. Lord Keen of Elie (Richard Keen QC, pictured) was appointed last month as justice minister in England and Wales.

Robin Tilbrook, a solicitor and chairman of the English Democrats, says it is a ‘disgrace’ that a Scot has infiltrated the MoJ. ‘Yet again the British government has shown its inability to understand the current national realities of an increasingly disunited UK,’ he fumes.

Keen is certainly as Scottish as The Proclaimers and Irn-Bru, and he has practised predominantly in Scotland. However Obiter notes that he has been a member of the bar in England and Wales since 2009. He has also ventured south for the odd Supreme Court case, so he knows his way around, at least.

Topics