THE QUIET DEATH OF ENGLISH LIBERTY

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:

STARMER 

(peering over his spectacles like a dour headmaster):

“The problem with juries is that they keep letting the wrong people go free.”

LAMMY 

(nodding sagely):

“Exactly, Prime Minister. Also, they’re full of, y’know… people.”

REEVES 

(clutching the Treasury abacus):

“And people cost money. Imagine if we could skip the whole charade and go straight to sentencing. 

Think of the savings!”

RAYNER 

(from the corner, where she has been practising her revolutionary scowl):

“Comrades, the time has come to abolish the last vestige of bourgeois liberalism!”

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.

THE £22BN HOLE THAT WASN'T THERE

It is a truth universally acknowledged in the corridors of Westminster that when a Labour Chancellor discovers a fiscal black hole large enough to swallow the GDP of a modest Balkan republic, the correct response is not to fill it but to stand beside it, point downwards with theatrical alarm, and cry “Look what the last lot did!” before tipping in another twenty-six billion pounds of everyone else’s money. Rachel Reeves, our new Master of the Exchequer, has taken this ancient art to previously unscaled heights of virtuosity. One almost wants to stand and applaud, were it not for the fact that one’s wallet is already lying winded on the floor.

The alleged abyss, you will recall, was £22 billion deep—give or take the odd hundred million, a sum so trifling in Whitehall that it is practically loose change. To plug this imaginary void the Chancellor imposed tax rises of £26 billion, a margin of error so generous it could only be the work of a woman who once edited the chess column of the Guardian and therefore understands that sometimes one must sacrifice a pawn, or indeed an entire middle class, to achieve checkmate. Yet here comes the delicious twist, the moment at which the whole solemn edifice begins to wobble like a jelly on a trampoline. Documents from the Office for Budget Responsibility—those stern monks who guard the nation’s abacus—reveal that by October 2025 the government already enjoyed £4.2 billion of fiscal headroom. Headroom! The very word has a buoyant, almost frivolous ring to it, like the spare bedroom one keeps for visiting aunts who never actually visit. 

Four point two billion in the kitty, and still the cry went up that the safe was bare. One is reminded of the great music-hall routine in which the comedian discovers a ten-shilling note in his pocket and immediately declares bankruptcy on the grounds that he once lost a fiver in 1947. Naturally, questions have been asked. An ethics probe has been launched, which in modern Britain means that a committee of the suitably grave will meet for several years, consume several hundredweight of custard creams, and finally conclude that nobody can be held responsible because the dog ate the minutes. Market-abuse allegations flutter in the air like confetti at a wedding nobody wanted to attend. And still the Prime Minister, Keir Starmer—looking, as ever, like a man who has just been told the Wi-Fi password is “BeSureToDrinkYourOvaltine”—insists that everything is proceeding exactly according to plan. The plan, one presumes, being to govern as though the electorate were a rather slow child who can be placated with a lollipop made of broken promises.

Meanwhile, in the wings, Ed Miliband—last seen attempting to power the national grid with the kinetic energy of his own moral superiority—hovers like a moth near the flame of Net Zero. Winter fuel payments have been removed from pensioners who now face the choice between heating and eating, a dilemma resolved, one suspects, by eating the cat and burning the sofa. All this, we are told, is necessary to save the planet, which is generous of us considering the planet has survived ice ages, meteor strikes and the entire discography of Phil Collins without requiring a single means-tested pensioner to sit in the dark. True to form, the media predicts panic in the parliamentary Labour Party, resignations, early elections, and the return of the Tories—presumably wearing false noses and speaking in regional accents so that nobody recognises them. One detects in his prose the faint, acrid scent of a man who has just watched his winter fuel allowance disappear into the same black hole that wasn’t there.

And perhaps he has a point. When a government can discover £4.2 billion of headroom and still impose £26 billion of tax rises with a straight face, one begins to suspect that arithmetic is no longer the constraining factor in British politics. The constraining factor is imagination, and Labour’s imagination currently runs to only one scenario: there is never enough money, except, of course, for the consultants who advised them that there wasn’t enough money, and who are now billing by the hour to investigate why nobody noticed there was. In the end, the £22 billion black hole turns out to have been less a fiscal catastrophe than a conjuring trick—a hole so artfully contrived that it vanished the moment anyone shone a torch into it. 

One is left with the melancholy reflection that, in the great theatre of British governance, the audience is no longer asked merely to suspend disbelief. We are now required to suspend belief itself, and to do it cheerfully, before being handed the bill for the magician’s champagne.

BADENOCH'S BASIC INSTINCT

One does not, as a rule, expect the Leader of the Opposition’s response to an Autumn Budget to function as an aphrodisiac. Chancellors come and go, spreadsheets bloom and wither, and the nation traditionally responds with the erotic fervour one normally reserves for a parking ticket. Yet on the 26th of November 2025, something quite unprecedented occurred in the Mother of Parliaments: Kemi Badenoch rose to speak and, within four and a half minutes, half of the UK's political commentators required a lie-down and a cigarette.

It was not merely that she demolished Rachel Reeves with the polite savagery of a woman returning a substandard soufflé. It was the way she did it. She stood there in a navy skirt suit so severe it could have been designed by the later novels of Franz Kafka, hair scraped back with the uncompromising neatness of a woman who has never lost an argument with a hairpin, and delivered judgement in a voice that sounded like expensive chocolate being rubbed against velvet. Low, exact, amused without ever smiling, each syllable placed with the precision of a sniper who sends you a thank-you note afterwards.

Let us be clear: Mrs Badenoch is alarmingly easy on the eye. She possesses the kind of bone structure that makes one suspect the Almighty was having a particularly good Wednesday when He got to the cheekbones. The eyes are large, dark and unblinking, the gaze of a leopard that has already calculated your tax liability and found it wanting. The mouth, when it moves, does so economically, as though every word has been means-tested. Even her ears (an area where many politicians come to grief) are elegant, discreet, the auditory equivalent of a Hermes Kelly bag. 

And then there is the posture. She does not so much stand at the dispatch box as occupy it, the way a very expensive chess piece occupies a square it has no intention of vacating. Shoulders back, chin level, chest out, she radiates the serene authority of a woman who could itemise your deductions while bringing you to your knees with a single raised eyebrow. It is the poise of someone who has never, even in the privacy of her own bathroom, allowed herself an unflattering angle. The speech itself was a masterclass in political evisceration served cold. Labour, she explained, had produced a Budget that was “smorgasbord of misery," labelling it a "Budget for Benefits Street." – a phrase so perfectly balanced it could have been set to music by Cole Porter. She lingered over the words the way a sommelier lingers over a particularly treacherous Château Margaux, letting the bouquet of contempt fully develop. Grown men in the press gallery were seen crossing and uncrossing their legs for reasons that they claimed had nothing to do with circulation.

One understands the phenomenon. There is, after all, a long and dishonourable tradition of finding female power sexually compelling. Cleopatra, Elizabeth I, Mrs Thatcher in her prime, even (arguably) Teresa May in the early years of the Cameron cabinet – all benefited from the curious human tendency to confuse the ability to ruin a country with the ability to ruin an evening in a more intimate sense. Badenoch, however, brings something new to the table: the weaponization of competence itself. She is not merely dominant; she is correct, and she knows it, and she is prepared to wait while the implications sink in. It is rather like being seduced by a particularly austere Swiss watch. The internet, as is its wont, responded with the subtlety of a teenage boy discovering his father’s jazz-mag collection. “I am not saying I would let Kemi Badenoch audit me,” wrote one usually sober commentator, “but I would certainly let her depreciate my assets.” Another, more candidly still: “Just watched the Badenoch speech on 1.5× speed and I need to speak to someone in HR.” A third simply posted a gif of a burning monastery with the caption “Me after she said ‘no plan, no clue’ in that voice.”

Naturally the left professed itself baffled and appalled, as though discovering that gravity might also be considered attractive by some people. The Guardian ran a thoughtful piece asking whether it was appropriate to fancy a Tory, and concluded that it probably wasn’t, which struck one as rather missing the point. Desire has never been notable for its ideological consistency. One suspects Robespierre had his admirers, and that someone, somewhere, once found Emmeline Pankhurst’s oratorical style compelling in a safe-word sort of way. In the end, the Badenoch Moment may tell us more about the British electorate than about Mrs Badenoch herself. After years of being governed by people who looked as though they had been dressed by concerned relatives in the dark, we are suddenly confronted by a politician who appears to have been assembled, at ruinous expense, by a committee of Renaissance sculptors and Bond villains. The effect is rather like walking into a branch of Greggs and discovering Tyra Banks behind the counter asking whether you’d like a sausage roll with that.

Whether this newfound erotic charge will translate into votes remains to be seen. History suggests that sexual charisma is a double-edged sword: Thatcher won elections but never, to one’s certain knowledge, inspired a range of tasteful underwear. Badenoch, however, operates in a more image-conscious age. Given another two or three performances like the Budget response, the Conservative Party may find itself having to issue content warnings before its leader speaks. One thing is certain: the dispatch box will never seem quite the same again. 

Somewhere in the rafters of the Palace of Westminster, the ghost of Aneurin Bevan is shaking his head and muttering, “In my day we managed to bring down governments without anyone having to loosen their collar.” Quite. But then Bevan never had Kemi Badenoch’s cheekbones, did he? Some weapons of mass seduction are simply too powerful for the old rules.