It’s judge, jury and a sloppy execution
THE right to trial by jury has been the cornerstone of Britain’s legal system for nearly 900 years.
It is a cherished part of our freedom that justice is decided by 12 people plucked from obscurity to sit in judgment of their peers.
Yet in a dangerous shake-up, Labour wants to hand that power to elite and often out-of-touch judges.
Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy plans to sweep in a new high-speed justice system to clear a backlog of 78,000 criminal cases.
Five years ago he argued that “trials without juries are a bad idea”.
Now he’s changed his tune after reading a review by retired judge Sir Brian Leveson, who thinks the public shouldn’t worry their tiny heads about criminal justice and should leave it to legal professionals.
Perhaps Sir Brian has not yet recovered from his failed 1989 prosecution of Ken Dodd when a jury cleared the comedian of tax fraud.
British judges and lawyers already have too much power. Do we now trust them to make commonsense decisions in the criminal courts, when they have failed so miserably on immigration tribunals?
Scrapping juries will cause further delays as judges’ written verdicts leave the door open to long and costly appeals.
Sir Keir Starmer can end courtroom delays simply by rooting out inefficiency in the Crown Prosecution Service, where he was once boss.
The jury system is one part of our legal tradition that the public has confidence in. The Prime Minister scraps it at his peril.
When it comes to justice, 12 down-to-earth heads is best.
Rachel on countdown
AFTER spending the past few weeks trying to hoodwink the nation about the public finances, Rachel Reeves has now taken to deluding herself.
The Chancellor brushed off the storm surrounding her second Budget and told the left-wing Guardian: “In the end it was, I think, OK.”
Well, that’s a view unlikely to be shared by the millions bearing the brunt of her £30billion tax raid to fund a massive welfare splurge.
Only a third of ordinary Brits think she did any better than Liz Truss’s disastrous mini-Budget of 2022.
The Office for Budget Responsibility now reveals it told her THREE WEEKS AGO there was no black hole in the finances.
Did she mislead the public deliberately or was she too incompetent to unravel the figures?
Either way, the answer is alarming.
The Chancellor’s actions have damaged confidence in the economy — and in her own ability to manage it.
