Sorry, M’Lud, a free Press is as vital to society as the rule of law
THe tone was sweet reason, but the message was laced with menace and grievance. Lord Neuberger, president of the supreme Court, declared that newspaper criticism of judges was ‘undermining the rule of law’.
He complained that politicians had been too slow to defend the judiciary in the wake of last November’s ruling that Parliament, not the people, must have the decisive vote on Brexit.
His Lordship didn’t name any publications, but he was presumably referring to headlines in the Daily Telegraph and the Mail that were critical of the three High Court justices.
He said in a radio interview: ‘The rule of law together with democracy is one of the two pillars on which our society is based.’
Up to a point, Lord Neuberger. There is a third pillar which is equally vital — a free Press to scrutinise politicians only too willing to defy the will of the people, and unelected judges, who increasingly interpret the law to reinforce their own political agenda.
He acknowledged: ‘The Press and the media generally have a positive duty to keep an eye on things . . . But I think with that right, that power, comes the degree of responsibility.’
And he said that in the wake of the Brexit ruling: ‘We [judges] were certainly not well treated. One has to be careful about being critical of the Press, particularly as a lawyer or judge, because our view of life is very different from that of the media.’
But he warned that unjustified attacks on the judiciary risk ‘undermining our society’ and said politicians should have been much more robust in defending judges.
He’s correct to say that the judiciary’s view of life is different from that of the media. Judges demonstrate that every day in some of the perverse rulings they hand down, especially when european ‘human rights’ laws are involved.
They seem to delight in turning natural justice on its head — refusing to deport foreign murderers, rapists and terrorists, for instance.
Far too many judges seem to think they have the right to mould the law in any way they choose, regardless of whether their decision reflects the original intention of the statute or whether the consequences are in the wider public interest.
I’m not going to revisit every cough and spit of the legal squabble over Brexit, other than to restate my own view that the courts should never have been involved in the process. Parliament voted six to one to hold the referendum, the Government guaranteed the result would be implemented, and the British people decided by a clear majority to Leave.
so the Press was absolutely justified in criticising those judges who sided with resentful, defeated Remainers trying to use the courts to overturn the result and keep Britain in the eU.
If His Lordship thinks some of the criticism was intemperate — well, sorry old son, tough. Millions of people were furious that the courts were being used to frustrate democracy. sections of the media reflected that righteous anger. The subsequent sight of all 11 puffed-up supreme Court justices crammed in to the appeal hearing turned a three-ring circus into a full-blown farce.
The fact that three of them sided against the Remoaners proves that this wasn’t a purely black-and-white issue of law, it was a matter of interpretation.
Consequently, the Press has every right, if not to question any individual judge’s integrity, then certainly to examine the backgrounds of those handing down the ruling. The supreme Court itself is a europeanstyle institution, set up by Labour, and subordinate to european laws. Lord Neuberger himself has praised the influence of the eU on British law and is on record as saying he opposes withdrawal from the european Convention on Human Rights. His wife Angela called the referendum ‘mad and bad’.
It has not been suggested that any of his private beliefs influenced his impartiality, but we are nonetheless entitled to be told where he’s coming from.
Under Lord Neuberger, who stands down later this year, our courts have become dangerously politicised — which was Labour’s intention all along. Yet he is opposed to Parliamentary scrutiny of judges, fearing that this will take Britain down the American route, in which all senior judicial appointments are overtly political.
But, as the Brexit wrangle clearly demonstrates, Britain is already heading in the same direction as America, where activist judges are trying to derail Donald Trump at every turn.
Most worryingly, the politicisation of the courts has gone hand in hand with the sinister attempts by the establishment to shackle our free Press and impose new secrecy laws by stealth. We’ve had dozens of journalists dragged from their homes in dawn raids and put on trial for the non-existent crime of simply doing their job.
Time after time, thankfully, sensible juries sided with the journalists against the forces of law and order and reached not guilty verdicts.
The threat of forcing newspapers to accept a statutory state regulator — packed with embittered anti-Press fanatics — still hasn’t gone away. Nor has the scandalous attempt to make newspapers pay the legal costs of anyone who brings a libel action against them — win, lose or draw.
We’ve had the hapless, retiring Met Police chief Bernard HyphenHowe effectively criminalising all contact between his officers and crime reporters.
Only this week, we learned that the Law Commission proposed sending journalists to jail for publishing — indeed, even handling — confidential material which has been leaked to them by whistleblowers.
DOWNING street quashed that outrageous plan in double-quick time. But who is to say it won’t rear its ugly head again in the future? Most politicians only pay lip service to the notion of a free Press. Call Me Dave, a so-called liberal Conservative, set up the ludicrous Leveson witch-hunt.
sir Brian Leveson, who conducted that costly fiasco with a level of understanding of my trade which bordered on the cretinous, is now one of the leading names being tipped to succeed Lord Neuberger as head of the supreme Court.
One of his recommendations was that whistleblowers — in public bodies like the police and government departments — should have to report their concerns to their own employers rather than to the newspapers.
All that would achieve would be to institutionalise the culture of cover-up and prevent the paying public finding out what is being done in their name.
The truth is that neither politicians nor judges like too much scrutiny, especially when it filters down to the Great Unwashed.
That’s why the ‘third pillar’ — a free Press, unafraid and unrestrained from speaking truth to power — is essential if the will of the people is to be upheld and Britain can go on calling itself a democracy.