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| Britain |
| Turley on British Insanity - ‘...a tragic variation on Winston Churchill's legendary observation about the fleeting virtue of the insufferably sanctimonious.’ |
| 2025-12-15 |
| Below is my column in The Wall Street Journal on the move to sharply curtail the use of jury trials in Great Britain. The ill-conceived move is the work of Secretary of State for Justice and Lord Chancellor David Lammy, who previously denounced the idea as an abandonment of British values and the loss of a critical protection for citizens. It is a tragic variation on Winston Churchill’s legendary observation about the fleeting virtue of the insufferably sanctimonious. Like the socialite who was indignant when Churchill puckishly offered a small amount of money to sleep with him, it turns out that Lammy was “just haggling over price.” When faced with significant savings, Lammy is willing to toss aside the right that once defined them as a people. Here is the column: “Criminal trials without juries are a bad idea,” Labor MP David Lammy said in 2020 as he denounced calls to reduce jury trials in criminal cases to save money. Now secretary of state for justice and lord chancellor, Mr. Lammy is seeking a major rollback on the quintessential right secured more than 800 years ago in the Magna Carta. According to media reports, the government previously sought to remove jury trials for all cases involving a maximum jail term of five years. Now the government is moving to allow jury trials for “indictable-only” offences such as murder and “either-way” offenses with likely sentences of more than three years in prison. Judge-only “swift” courts will hear cases ranging from burglary, theft, fraud, sexual assault to stalking. Judges will also sit without a jury in fraud and financial cases deemed too complex for jurors. For some of us, the greatest concern lies in how these reforms will interact with the prosecution of speech offenses. In the last two decades, free speech protections in the U.K. have been eviscerated. The criminalization of speech has expanded exponentially as individuals and groups call the police to silence those who criticize them or advocate opposing views. Even silent prayer or “toxic ideologies” can lead to arrest. Expressing concerns over Western cultural values is now treated as an admission of “right-wing ideology,” warranting investigation. In April, the Times reported that police are making around 12,000 arrests per year over online posts. Under the new proposal, these cases would generally be heard without juries, which may represent the last hope for free-speech advocates seeking to blunt the government’s onslaught. Research by the Free Speech Union in Britain indicates that defendants in speech cases are twice as likely to be acquitted by a jury than by a judge. We have already seen justice meted out by British judges in speech cases. A few years ago, a neo-Nazi living with his mother was found to have a room filled with hateful symbols and material. Judge Peter Lodder dismissed free speech concerns over the defendant’s possessions with a truly Orwellian flourish: “I do not sentence you for your political views, but the extremity of those views informs the assessment of dangerousness.” Calling the defendant “a right-wing extremist,” Mr. Lodder said the contents of his room were evidence of “enthusiasm for this repulsive and toxic ideology.” Related: David Lammy 12/13/2025 Anti-Israel activists vandalize UK justice ministry with red paint David Lammy 11/22/2025 'A systemic threat to our values.' The British are powerless against Chinese spies. David Lammy 10/22/2025 UK drops terror label for Syria’s Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which helped topple Assad |
| Posted by:NoMoreBS |