In the first of an occasional series, our scribe reflects on the wacky world of the English legal system

The English have always had an ambivalent relationship with their legal system. It is regularly cited as an example of good governance and an incentive for litigants to fight their cases under English law. Yet the law can be also, as is frequently observed, an ass. Or, as Shakesperare’s Dick the Butcher has it more pungently: ‘first, let’s kill all the lawyers’.

While some of the wider accusations of judicial overreach are either exaggerated, or mistake the application of bad laws by judges who have little choice but to do so, Swift feels a broader trend of legal insanity is now incontrovertible.

Here are three recent examples.

Exhibit A is Lady Chief Justice Dame Sue (sic) Carr (England’s most senior judge), who took it upon herself to reprimand the Prime Minister and the leader of the Opposition for daring to question a decision by a senior immigration judge to allow a family of six from Gaza to stay under a scheme intended for Ukrainians. Of course that old warhorse, the European Convention on Human Rights was brought out: in this case  - the right to a family life between them and a relative in the UK, which seems tenuous at best.

No matter. Dame Sue climbed on her highest horse to put elected politicians in their place. It was not for the PM and Kemi to question a judge’s ruling. Within a degree of pomposity that even Captain Mainwaring of Dad’s Army fame would struggle to match, she opined that ‘both the question and the answer were unacceptable’.

This was unwise, is constitutional balderdash, but very revealing of the exalted status that judges imagine they enjoy and deserve.

Swift’s eye was also caught by two recent decisions which are questionable (although the Deadly Dame would definitely not approve of calling them out).

In Exhibit B, the High Court (Mould J), decided that the then Home Secretary Suella Braverman was wrong to accommodate three asylum-seekers in  a former RAF base because of her failure to assess the ‘equalities implications’  (whatever that means) of popping these people into ‘prison-like conditions’. No matter that Wethersfield in Essex was no doubt considerably more comfortable than their previous living conditions. (Side note: Braintree District Council challenged the decision to use Wethersfield via our old favourite judicial review: lost in High Court, lost in Court of Appeal, cost to the unfortunate residents approx £234,000).

Exhibit C: the Iranian sex offender who has managed to stay in the UK since 2004 (!) despite committing crimes including sexual assault and stalking, by claiming a conversion to Christianity. Of course he does not actually attend any church (poor chap hasn’t found one he is ‘comfortable with’), but worships at home.

One might expect that he would be instantly bundled on the first plane to Tehran to a warm welcome from the Ayatollahs. But no. The immigration judges, overruling all expert evidence by officials, noted that worship at home is not incompatible with the Christian faith and that sexual offences did not invalidate his claim.

Swift would have thought that immigration judges might have seen enough of the world to detect such a brazen attempt to game the system. It appears not, and Swift will be shortly selling them a bridge he has.

All of this is simply a reminder of the terrible trinity: judges who (rather like CofE bishops, are no longer pillars of the establishment but have joined the ranks of the woke virtue-signallers); the pernicious effect of the ECHR; and the equally poisonous Human Rights and Equality Acts.

So, what is to be done? Simples: repeal the offending legislation, leave the ECHR, and return judicial appointments to the accountable Lord Chancellor, and away from the Judicial Appointments Commission which is compelled by law (and instinct) to prize diversity above talent.

If not, the Dick the Butcher’s more radical solution might be increasingly popular.