The Chief Constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland is under increasing pressure to resign, after a High Court judge found that two junior officers were unlawfully disciplined to placate Sinn Fein. It is the latest controversy in a disastrous summer for Simon Byrne and the PSNI. Previously, it emerged that a high profile data […]
When it comes to commentary on Suella Braverman’s pledge that the police shall henceforth investigate every crime, there is probably no surpassing Duncan Robinson’s ‘Borat Britain‘. For a first-world nation that still at least imagines itself wealthy, how else to respond but ‘Wow! Every crime???’ Yet with crushing predictability, that has not been officialdom’s response. […]
The serial child killer Lucy Letby refused to face the judge and the parents of her victims when sentence was passed earlier today. Her cowardice was predictable. Her ability to manipulate the system to evade public judgment is inexcusable. Letby is a convicted murderer. As such she has crossed the line from defendant – innocent […]
There’s no event so horrific that Sadiq Khan won’t try to mine some kind of political capital from it. So it proved with the awful homophobic attack outside a south London nightclub late on Sunday night. True to form, the Mayor of London tweeted that ‘those who stoke up hate and vilify LGBTQ+ people’ bear […]
There’s a common refrain online bemoaning what human meddling has done to the appearance and temperament of man’s best friend. Observe the tortured wheezing of the Pug, the trembling rage of the Chihuahua, and the Habsburg inbreeding of the English Bulldog. What, if anything, do these nightmarish creations have to do with their wolf ancestors? […]
The Metropolitan Police’s women problem just won’t go away. Over the weekend, a trans woman with a violent history as a male appeared at the London Trans Pride festival. Sarah Jane Baker addressed a large crowd with a microphone and told them: ‘…if you see a Terf, punch them in the f*cking face.’ The audience […]
Before being sentenced to 45 months in prison for fraud, I knew that British prisons were bad. I expected endemic violence, drugs and filth. What I found inside still horrified me. Yes, our prisons are dirty, dangerous and awash with drugs. What’s much worse though is that they make prisoners more likely to reoffend, costing […]
Abortion raises questions of life and death, and is rightly a fraught topic. But the way campaigners have sought to exploit the deeply upsetting case of a mother who has been jailed for terminating a late-term pregnancy is particularly galling. Carla Foster took pills that she had obtained by deception which resulted in the stillbirth […]
‘Prison doesn’t work’, to paraphrase the speech given by Sir John Major at the Old Bailey this week. This will be news to his former Home Secretary, Michael Howard, who memorably said the opposite back in the 1990s. So who’s right? Neither of them, as it happens. For starters, though, I need to give Sir […]
There’s little doubt that the authorities in this country have repeatedly bungled investigations into child sexual abuse. So today’s announcement from the Prime Minister and Home Secretary of a new package of measures to deal with this national outrage are more than welcome – even if many will wish the Government had done more, sooner. […]
‘Fascism’ has had an inclusive make-over. Sadly, this doesn’t mean skinheads have come to embrace racial harmony, but that the term itself is now applied more liberally by the day. Last weekend, trans activists shouted the ‘f’ word at diverse groups of women who dared to meet to talk about their rights. Targets included older […]
I’ve often thought that Shakespeare had it about right in Henry IV, Part II, with the line ‘Let’s kill all the lawyers.’ Despite my mother’s dream that I would grow up and become a barrister, my impression of the legal profession is that it is largely a sinecure for grand-standing bores and over-privileged Prospect readers […]
Racism, misogyny, homophobia and jaw-dropping levels of incompetence – the word ‘damning’ barely seems adequate for Baroness Casey’s final report into the behaviour and internal culture of the Metropolitan Police. Anyone who read her interim findings would have expected this to be a pretty no-holds-barred account of life in London’s police service, but the findings […]
‘You do not get to make up your own rules… And do you – do you – do you think you’re special? A contract means something. It’s the law, and it’s enforceable. Deal with it.’ This monologue, delivered by lawyer Kim Wexler in Breaking Bad prequel Better Call Saul, came to my mind when I […]
Earlier this week, Sean Robinson began a prison sentence after being convicted of rape and actual bodily harm. The details are horrific. I am sorry to have to recount them. The 18-year-old forced a woman to submit to rape in order to save the life of a man she was out with on a first […]
There is a myth among constitutional lawyers that Margaret Thatcher inadvertently popularised judicial review. The story goes that back in the 1980s, when the government was all powerful and the hapless Michael Foot was incapable of mounting effective challenges in the Commons, the courts became the only means with which decisions by public bodies could […]
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