One has to hand it to David Lammy, our Deputy Prime Minister, Justice Secretary and part-time constitutional arsonist. In an age when most politicians struggle to tie their own ideological shoelaces, he has managed to propose something so exquisitely totalitarian that even Kim Jong-un might blush and say, “Steady on, old boy—that’s a bit much for a Tuesday.”
The plan, delivered with all the breezy confidence of a man who once identified the Vatican as part of France and believed that Henry VIII was succeeded by his own father, is to abolish trial by jury for certain offences. Not the glamorous ones, you understand—no more juries for murder, rape, or high treason (yet). Just the boring stuff: minor thefts, low-level assaults, the sort of crimes that used to be settled by twelve ordinary citizens who had been dragged away from their jobs and their gardens and forced to sit through PowerPoint presentations by barristers. Henceforth, apparently, these trifling matters will be decided by a single judge, probably one appointed under the enlightened patronage of the current Labour regime, who will weigh the evidence with all the impartiality of a North Korean election monitor.
It is, of course, all for our own good. Juries are slow. Juries are expensive. Juries occasionally acquit people the Crown Prosecution Service would rather see in the gulag. And in the new sunlit uplands of Starmerite Britain, efficiency is the only god worth worshipping. One imagines the Cabinet discussion went something like this:
Thus is the ancient right of trial by one’s peers—magna carta, ransom demands, Simon de Montfort, the whole glorious pageant—quietly folded into a shredder marked 'Modernisation.' Naturally, the Government insists this is merely a pilot scheme, a modest little experiment, like the early stages of the Cultural Revolution or the Reichstag Fire Decree. Nothing to see here, citizens. Just a spot of administrative streamlining. You will still have juries for the big show trials—sorry, I mean the really serious cases. For the moment. Until the moment it becomes inconvenient. Then, no doubt, we shall discover that jury trials for terrorism or climate denial or unauthorised opinions on the internet are themselves a form of stochastic terrorism against the progressive state.
One can picture the scene in Court Number One at the Old Bailey in, say, 2032: the defendant, charged with possessing an unredacted copy of Orwell, is informed by a beaming judge that “for reasons of public safety and decarbonisation targets, your case will be heard by a panel of three senior civil servants and an algorithm trained on Guardian editorials.” The public gallery will be empty, because attendance is now considered a micro-aggression. But let us not be beastly to Mr Lammy. He is, after all, a sensitive soul who once wept openly at the thought of Brexit voters being 'gammon.' One detects in his jury-culling proposal the same tender concern for the little people. How much nicer for the accused, he reasons, to be dispatched by a single functionary of the state rather than suffer the indignity of being judged by twelve of their fellow citizens who might—who knows?—harbour reactionary ideas about innocence until proven guilty. In Lammy’s Britain, the state will love you and despatch you with the brisk kindness of a vet putting down a three-legged cat. It’s practically Scandinavian.
Comparisons are odious, but sometimes irresistible. In Venezuela, Hugo Chávez found juries troublesome; he preferred revolutionary tribunals. In Erdogan’s Turkey, judges who show too much independence tend to wake up facing terrorism charges themselves. In China, the concept of a jury is regarded with the same amused contempt that one might reserve for the flat-earth society. And now Britain—cradle of habeas corpus, birthplace of the common law—joins the club. One awaits the inevitable visit from Nicolás Maduro, who will tour the Ministry of Justice offering fraternal advice on how to rig—sorry, streamline—the legal system while keeping up appearances for the tourists.
The beauty of the Lammy doctrine is its sheer honesty. Most dictatorships at least pretend to revere the forms of justice while subverting them. Our lot can’t even be bothered with the pretence. They have looked at the central tradition of English liberty—twelve random citizens, bored, confused, occasionally heroic—and decided it is surplus to requirements in the exciting new era of managerial socialism. Why bother with the messy business of persuasion when you can simply rule by decree and call it compassion? There is, of course, the small matter that juries are the last firewall between the citizen and the unlimited power of the state. Remove them for 'minor' offences today, and tomorrow the definition of “minor” expands like Labour’s client base. Possession of an offensive meme? Straight to the judge. Failure to display adequate enthusiasm on Trans Remembrance Day? Judge. Questioning the latest net-zero target? Judge, judge, judge. And the judges themselves, naturally, will be chosen for their soundness on the important issues of our time: decarbonisation, decolonisation, and the correct pronunciation of 'Kia-Ora.'
One remembers Margaret Thatcher's gentle observation that the trouble with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money. To which we may now add a corollary: the trouble with British socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s liberties, and you have to start burning the furniture. Trial by jury is very old furniture—oak, hand-carved, a bit scratched in places, but still perfectly serviceable. David Lammy and his friends have decided to chop it up for kindling because it clashes with the new colour scheme. Future historians—assuming any are still allowed to write history that has not been pre-approved by the state—will marvel at the speed of the capitulation. A thousand years from Runnymede to Starmer, via Cromwell, the Glorious Revolution, and two world wars fought explicitly against continental tyrannies that had abolished such inconveniences as independent justice. And then, in the space of one damp parliamentary term, the whole edifice quietly folded because a man who can’t find the Vatican on a map decided it was inefficient.
Make no mistake, Lammy has not reformed the criminal justice system in any way, shape or form, he has amputated it, with a blunt rusty old hacksaw. But look on the bright side, at least when they come for you, the process will be swift. No more tedious weeks of your neighbours squinting at evidence and occasionally—perish the thought—deciding the state is wrong. Just a polite knock on the door, a brief ride in an electric van, and a single functionary ticking the box marked “Guilty—next!” Progress, comrades. Sheer, unadulterated progress.