Labour in the Dock Over Plans To Scrap Jury Trials

Keir Starmer’s government has found a new problem to ‘fix’—and it’s not Britain’s borders, crime, or economy. It’s the jury system.

Voters may be desperate for the government to get a grip—finally—on Britain’s porous borders. They may also want it to deal with troubling criminality and start sorting out the economy.

Instead, ministers are planning to scrap jury trials for all but the most serious crimes—or, more accurately, to gut one of the most fundamental features of the British constitution that has existed for more than 800 years.

Establishment governments have already, over recent decades, weakened the jury system, allowing majority—rather than unanimous—verdicts and removing important standards for participation. Now, Justice Secretary David Lammy is reportedly set to abolish the system altogether except for alleged rapists and killers.

Officials say this will solve the backlog of cases in Britain’s courts, but it probably won’t. What it will do is greatly damage Britain’s legal system, from which the rest of the world previously learnt so much. Not that any of this is surprising, given Starmer’s radical leftist background and his government’s intention to rip up the constitution, much ignored in the run-up to last year’s general election.

Journalist Peter Hitchens said in July that “far from further weakening jury trial,” never mind scrapping it altogether, “we need to ban dangerous majority verdicts, found in many miscarriages of justice, and at the very least have a higher minimum age for jurors than 18. Perhaps 30.” Crucially, he added:

Defend and strengthen the jury. It may one day stand between you and a miserable life behind bars.

Reports of this abolition have resulted in a major backlash, not least given the fact Lammy himself said just five years ago that “jury trials are a fundamental part of our democratic settlement. Criminal trials without juries are a bad idea.”

Jury trials are a fundamental part of our democratic settlement. Criminal trials without juries are a bad idea.

The Government need to pull their finger out and acquire empty public buildings across the country to make sure these can happen in a way that is safe.

— David Lammy (@DavidLammy) June 20, 2020

The Free Speech Union described juries as “the last line of defence against the authoritarian cancel mob.”

This move is about power, not saving costs. Nothing in our present national situation warrants abandoning an 800-year-old right: that in a court of law, your peers decide if you’re guilty, not the state. We will fight any such proposal with everything we’ve got.

Reform’s Nigel Farage also said on Tuesday that such a move would “give our politicised judiciary far too much power,” adding: “This Labour government is crushing our freedom.”

The Left is just as outraged. Jeremy Corbyn, for example, has praised trial by jury as “a cornerstone of our democracy and an essential safeguard against authoritarianism.”

It is truly frightening that such a fundamental freedom is now under attack. Once rights are lost, they are not easy to win back. We must resist this with all we’ve got.

This is the correct response. Whether the government cares is another matter.