If you look through this morning’s For Women Scotland judgment for statements that wokery is dead, or that the Supreme Court trenchantly confirms that there are only two sexes, you’ll be disappointed. The judgment is actually a long, convoluted and often turgid exercise in statutory construction. Assuming that you can remain awake, what it decides […]
If there was any profession whose members you would expect to understand the principle that actions have consequences, it would be the legal profession – and especially the judiciary. It is their job, after all, to dole out life-changing consequences. When someone has broken the law, the judge hands down the sentence. Yet in recent […]
Amid the outrage over the recommended changes by the Sentencing Council, each side of the political aisle has reacted with condemnation and attempts to offset the fears of ‘two-tier sentencing’ and undermining the principle of equality under the law. On the Conservatives’ side, Robert Jenrick has won an impressive victory by challenging the legality of […]
‘It’s a free country,’ we used to say to each other when I was growing up in the 1970s. Usually, it was an indication of tolerant and good-humoured derision that had been preceded by someone else expressing some eccentric taste or allegiance. ‘I support Arsenal,’ or, ‘I’m getting a pair of corduroy trousers.’ Perhaps even, […]
You can always tell that a policy is a winner when its advocates start simultaneously arguing that it’s a very important reform and that it won’t actually change anything, as did one of my fellow witnesses on recent edition of Radio 4’s ‘Moral Maze’. The creation of the Supreme Court is perhaps the prime example […]
Although the acronym SLAPPs (Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation) emerged in the United States in 1996 from Professors George Pring and Penelope Canan’s ‘SLAPPs: Getting Sued for Speaking Out’, it originated with Sir James Goldsmith, Robert Maxwell and Mohamed Fayed in their attempts to silence their critics. Drugs companies such as Upjohn and the Sacklers’ […]
Imagine this scenario: you host a dinner party in your home aglow with candlelight and conversation. On a polished oak shelf sits a delicate Cisk lager-branded ash tray, collected from a recent trip to Malta. Though not of great value, it holds sentimental charm, a quiet testament to travels past. As the evening draws to […]
Free speech and peaceful assembly aren’t – or at least shouldn’t be – too difficult to understand. You need to be allowed to write or say what you like, and meet who you like, without worrying who you offend. However, this must stop short of assaulting people, deliberately and forcibly stopping them going about their […]
Texas is not soft on crime. It has seen the execution of 600 prisoners in the past 40 years, including two so far this year – more than any other state in the US. Some 173 more are waiting on death row. It is decidedly not the sort of place you’d expect a left-winger to […]
Baroness Carr, the most senior judge in England and Wales, has attacked both Keir Starmer and Kemi Badenoch in extremely strong terms for having the temerity to criticise the courts – specifically, a recent decision by the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal to allow six refugees from Gaza to settle in the United Kingdom. Referring to […]
For a Government which has had an absolutely torrid time of things since almost the moment it took office, the aftermath of last summer’s riots was a rare high point. For once, Keir Starmer got to strike a convincing pose as the tough-minded former prosecutor cracking down on disorder. Both the press and the public […]
As any young right-winger who spends a little too long on Twitter will tell you, the struggle of Nick (30 ans) is the struggle of our age. The social contract is fixed against him. His pay is meagre after the rent for his Zone 4 flat; his ever-growing tax burden goes to subsidise the housing […]
With the Labour mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham breaking ranks with Keir Starmer by calling for a national inquiry into grooming gangs, pressure on the UK Government to organise one is intensifying. Following Labour MPs helping to strike down a Tory amendment to the Children’s Wellbeing Bill which called for a statutory inquiry into […]
There has been a long history of the authorities resisting both scrutiny and accountability when it comes to the grooming gangs scandal. Those calling for a national inquiry into these gangs and the authorities’ response, are right to do so. There is so much we do not know and so much we have never sought […]
Some issues in public life should be very easy: safeguarding children as an absolute priority is one of them. Avoiding heaping shame on the innocent is another. The longstanding principles of justice in our country ought to make both ideas apparent. And yet, as the Telegraph sets out, in some parts of our country those charged […]
It’s not always much fun being an investigative journalist in this country. Friends of mine talk of spending months painstakingly tracking down paperwork, talking to sources and preparing their articles. Then, on receiving a legal letter from an expensive London law firm, they are forced to cut the best parts of their story or, worse […]
