In recent months, Shadow Secretary of State for Justice and Shadow Lord Chancellor Robert Jenrick has launched what appears more like a full-blown political attack on the independence of Britain’s judiciary than a policy critique. What was once thought unthinkable, British politicians casting judges as part of a “deep state conspiracy”, is increasingly being normalised.
This assault is not merely a constitutional quirk. It’s a deliberate populist power play: by undermining faith in the judiciary, Jenrick is supporting a weakening of its executive authority. For Liberal Democrats and all defenders of liberal democracy, this is a moment when constitutional guardianship must become a political act.
This isn’t the first time legal professionals have been attacked by the Tory Party, from Marco Longhi’s attack on “woke lefty lawyers” to Suella Braverman vowing to use her previous position as Home Secretary to bring “crooked immigration lawyers to justice“. While both were equally disgraceful, these were attacks on individual lawyers, rather than the entire judiciary system.
But now, Jenrick has said the quiet part out loud. Holding a peruke, Robert Jenrick spoke at the 2025 Conservative Party conference about how Britain has “a problem”, that he has discovered through his own research, “dozens of judges” having links to open border charities and pressure groups, and have spent their entire careers “fighting to keep illegal migrants in this country”, and compared these judges to a crooked football referee. He ends his tirade by announcing the Conservative Party won’t reform immigration tribunals, but instead, abolish them entirely.
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