Old Billy Was Right: Why we need to rein in the lawyers

Human rights laws and the idea of judicial review mean ‘we did everything right and in the correct order’ is sufficient defence even if everyone is broke, ill or dead

The most important fact about Keir Starmer, Britain’s prime minister, isn’t that his dad was a toolmaker. Nor is it that his mum was a nurse or that his first job was on a farm. The most important fact about Keir Starmer is that he is a lawyer, he is married to a lawyer and his friends are lawyers. Once you recognise this truth everything else that is wrong with Britain’s current government falls into place. And we should remember two things about lawyers, firstly they believe ‘process and procedure’ are paramount, and secondly lawyers think they should run everything.

The second point here, and I admit to a deep and scarring prejudice here, was banged home to me at my graduation ceremony in Hull’s Guildhall back in 1982:

“It was an exciting day. My parents (who didn't own a car) had come up from London for the ceremony. We were all besuited, gowned and sporting (if that's the right word) our mortar boards. Lots of slightly nervy chatter, adjusting of clothing (we didn't wear suits often after all) as we awaited the little moment of glory when in front of friends and family we troop up to the stage to get our degree.

And amongst all this the University Chancellor, Lord Wilberforce would address the assembled graduates sending them out into the world with the ringing cheer, support and endorsement of the university community. Except he didn't do this. The Noble Lord spent the entirety of his speech telling 1500 graduates in subjects like English Literature, Geography, Economics, French History and South East Asian Studies what an incredible boon and benefit it was to have a degree in law. We were told how important lawyers were, how lawyers should run business, control the civil service and generally be in charge of everything.

As the speech unfolded, we awaited the moment when Milord might deign to address the 98% of graduates who didn't study law and weren't about to study law. But no, it got worse. No praise for the value of economics, history or English, just a sullen, booming conclusion that law stood above all other subjects, more valuable and more important.

And we clapped. Because that's what you do on these occasions”

Although I’ve met, and worked with, some perfectly lovely lawyers in the years since that day, nothing has changed by view that, not only do lawyers believe they, not the people, own the law but also that the we have moved from government of and by the people towards government by lawyers and for the interests of lawyers. And because lawyers worry about ‘process and procedure’ more than beneficial outcomes for wider society, the result is bad government. At the heart of this is the branch of law loved most by Starmer and his coterie: human rights. We are told that the application of these ‘rights’ leads to a better, fairer, safer and happier society, but the reality is that the ‘rights’ are applied on the basis of ‘process and procedure’, without context and, often, used by the worst sort of people to advance their selfish interests and their political agenda (while the lawyers get rich). The Spectator reports on the lawyers chasing British soldiers over so-called rights:

“Simm tells me about someone he still calls ‘one of my young lads’, who served 34 years in the SAS, but who has been mired in a legal process for more than 20. ‘Soldier M’ was part of an SAS squad that killed four members of the IRA’s East Tyrone ‘brigade’ in 1992. The IRA men had just attacked Coalisland police station with a heavy machine gun mounted on the back of a lorry. They drove to the car park of a nearby church to change vehicles and dismantle the machine gun, but the SAS were waiting there for them. Soldier M and his comrades are being asked, once again, to account for their actions on that dark February night 32 years ago. This time, it’s an inquest, heard before a High Court judge and convened under the ECHR’s Article 2, which protects ‘everyone’s right to life’.”

Over the years, in the supposed interests of peace in Northern Ireland and buoyed by the egregious recommendations of the 2010 Saville Enquiry report into events in Londonderry during January 1972, human rights lawyers have pursued soldiers who served during the troubles. But these things are two-sided. Nobody is pursuing Gerry Adams over his role in organising the murder of hundreds. Nobody is chasing former IRA ‘soldiers’ (I prefer the word murderers) who maimed, raped, butchered and bombed their way across that tragic province for thirty years. The man who blew up friends of mine in Brighton back in 1984 walks free and untroubled by the attention of human rights lawyers but men from Britain’s special forces, people who would die to protect us, are hounded by friends of Keir Starmer simply for doing that job.

In less bloody circumstances, hardly a day passes without another shocking example of so-called human rights being used to protect the interests of murderers, rapists, child molesters, drug dealers and thieves. Plus those terrorists, of course. And this is before we get to the rise of legal activism as filling lawyers pockets with (often taxpayers) money results in the decisions of national and local government being eviscerated on the altars of human rights, legal process and judicial arrogance. During the interminable post-referendum Brexit process we witnessed just how corrupting this activist legalism could prove. But woe betide anyone who even hints that Britain’s courts and the lawyers who populate those courts are maybe a little over-mighty and that maybe we need a little more democracy and a little less law.

Our relationship with the law ought to be more like Humpty Dumpty’s relationship with words: "The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "Which is to be master---that's all." As I write it often seems that law is the master, or rather that law as described by lawyers is the master. Yes there are laws but this does not give lawyers and judges the power to use those rules to enforce falsehoods simply in the name of those laws. The courts cannot (although they appear and we seem to expect them to) define a woman because that truth isn’t governed by human law but by nature’s - or God’s - law. What the encoding of human rights has done is create a situation where the intersection of rights (does my ethno-religious status trump your gender preference or vice versa) must be settled by a judge despite such a settlement being reasonably impossible.

When the immigration case chasing lawyer argues that his child-molesting client can’t be deported because of his ‘right to a family life’ we look on aghast. Especially when the judge agrees, despite the family he has a right to including the children he molested. It is hard to believe in the rule of law when this is the sort of decision that ‘law’ makes.

When the courts pursue a government minister for information given him in confidence by serving soldiers, we really do need to ask who governs. Johnny Mercer, to his credit, stood firm and refused to expose people to the dreadful pursuit of those case-chasing lawyers at firms like Leigh Day:

“My position remains unchanged from the beginning of the year. I will always do all I can to assist this important inquiry. I will not betray those I served with who have confided in me, whatever the cost…As I have repeatedly stated, it remains entirely inappropriate to name those who confided in me without their consent. For the avoidance of doubt: I have not and I will not.”

There are many reasons why we arrived in the place where rich trendy lawyers questioned the choices of government, the decisions of parliament and the operational actions of armed forces. Part of this is about bad decision-making and poor accountability across the public sector but the rest is because through human rights laws and the essentially foreign idea of judicial review for laws we created a Frankenstein's monster of legal process and procedure. And, as we see from Keir Starmer, the lawyers' mind approach to government means that ‘we did everything right and in the correct order’ is sufficient defence even if everyone is broke, ill or dead.