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Joshua Rozenburg's insightful analysis of the challenges facing the new Lord Chancellor underscores that person's key task of restoring harmonious relations between the judiciary and government.

One place I would advise ministers to start with is compensation. It was Michael Gove who during the EU Referendum campaign, cast aspersions on 'experts,' yet the discount rate decision illustrated that if you politicise compensation by making a political appointee (the Lord Chancellor) responsible for setting payouts for catastrophically injured people, politics will trump pragmatism and expertise. Result: omnishambles

Likewise, for personal injury (whiplash) reform, the government wants to set tariffs itself, so overriding the judicial college guidelines, which have done a perfectly acceptable job setting the rates of compensation for many years. Result: claims touts fill their boots

This undermining of expertise and experience is symptomatic of a new political class that thinks it knows best. Experts become unfashionable, and within the Law at least, one consequence, as Joshua notes, is that judges become harder to find.

Governments are vulnerable to powerful lobbies, from big insurers to tabloid newspaper editors. Judges are, of course, a vested interest, but they do not, usually, change their minds because the Daily Mail editor tells them to.