OPINION
The PM agreed that 'a loophole' must be addressed (Image: PA)
It seems bizarre that of all the professions or trades imaginable, it is our judiciary who need to be reminded about the importance of accountability. How else are we meant to respond to the extraordinary — and virtually unprecedented — spat between the Prime Minister, the leader of the opposition and Britain’s most senior judge?
This legal dust-up revolves around the clearly loopy decision to allow a family of six from Gaza to stay in the UK despite them falsely using the Ukrainian resettlement scheme to gain access to the country. This led to Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch asking Sir Keir Starmer about it at Prime Minister’s Questions. In a rare moment of political accord, both agreed this was “a loophole” that must be addressed.
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And that’s where it would have ended were it not for the intervention of Lady Chief Justice Baroness Carr who, at a press conference last week, said their behaviour was “unacceptable” and “it is for the Government visibly to respect and protect the independence of the judiciary.” Indeed she added she would be writing to the PM and to the Lord Chancellor to put them straight.
What arrant and arrogant drivel!
As Oxford University legal scholar Professor Richard Ekins confirmed, there was “nothing in the least constitutionally improper” in what either the PM or Mrs Badenoch said and indeed, any idea that Sir Keir, a career lawyer who more often seems to be addressing the court room rather than the nation, would even entertain such a notion is risible.
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If this was an isolated incident it would be regrettable enough. But sadly the Lady Chief Justice’s claims of injustice seem to represent a growing trend, with previous PMs Boris Johnson and Liz Truss attracting similar ire.
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While many we pick manage to turn out to be at best average and at worst verging on utter incompetence, we do get to elect our politicians while no such luxury is afforded to us with our judges. Therefore, as it is palpably the role of our parliament to make the laws and it is the role of the judiciary to uphold them, if some are seen to be wrong, discredited, out of date or in dire need to change, it MUST fall to Parliament to effect that.
Judges need to accept they will be judged, whether they like it or not, and cannot expect to exist on some rarefied plain where no whiff of discontent or dissent can be tolerated as if they were in the pre-revolutionary days of the French ancien régime.
After all, they of all people should know that no-one is above the law.