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.
If the judiciary is deligitimised and constrained, then the executive becomes virtually unchecked. We risk a rapid decline towards executive dominance, characterised by the abuse of power, the complete erosion of minority rights, and a weakened rule of law.
When discussions of constitutional law arise outside of political circles, many people will roll their eyes or dismiss them as boring or “being too political,” but that is precisely what this situation is: political. Liberals must discuss this issue and bring people who otherwise wouldn’t know or care about the situation on board. This isn’t some arbitrary niche policy area; this is a matter of the everyday person’s rights and access to justice, fairness, and holding power to account.
The Lib Dems must take the reins on this situation and launch a fightback against the likes of Jenrick, Farage, and anyone else who wishes to undermine our democratic system. We must form Popular Fronts across political parties, legal organisations and civil society in opposition to this attack on our values. We need to simplify the language surrounding this issue to make it accessible and transparent: if judges cannot check ministers, then ministers go unchecked. Jenrick made claims that judges are biased actors working within the legal system, and the way to combat that is by scrutinising his claims openly, in public forums.
The Liberals and SDP-Liberal Alliance opposed Mrs Thatcher’s demonisation of coal miners as “the enemies within”. Now, forty years on, the Liberal Democrats must take up the fight against the Conservatives’ moral failures once more, but this time, on a much greater scale, with much greater consequences hanging in the balance.
* Jack Meredith is a member of the Welsh Liberal Democrats and an active campaigner and canvasser with Swansea and Gower Liberal Democrats. His writing focuses on democratic reform, social justice, trade unionism, economic democracy, and the institutional foundations of effective government. He has written for the Fabians, Lib Dem Voice, Liberator, Nation Cymru, Bylines Cymru, and Centre Think Tank.
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7 Comments
The law is laid down by Parliament but always open to some degree of interpretation so that judges make judgment according to the individuals accused and their effects on victims and others. Hence, over a period of time cases build up of precedence that other judges use when making their judgements. I tend to think that our Liberal principles suggest punishment to suit the criminal, not punishment to suit the crime.
But the idea has developed recently that government can lay down laws that are more strict and more clearly defined and as you say, even mpose much more restrictions on what judges can do. Indeed that reduces judges to mere implementers of what politicians say like AI or robots.
Will this continue to happen as long as we do not have a written constitution? We need one that puts care and concern for individual people whether accused or victim at its centre.
Whilst this is the more substantive thing Jenrick has said in recent days, that the media has picked up on, there is an equally important subtext going on that also need to be addressed. The most obvious overarching one is the extent to which both Conservatives and Reform are simply taking Trumps lead, but the more subtle one is the extent to which power has been delegated by Parliament, but not removed from Parliaments reach.
In this case the appointment of Judges, which was placed at arms length, deliberately by Parliament, to make appointments more transparent. However, this and I suspect many other things we take for granted, only works through the consent of Parliament. Given a sufficient majority and a government with an intent to “take back control” the consensus, that we take for granted can be removed and power concentrated into an Executive, with a highly political agenda.
@Nigel ” But the idea has developed recently that government can lay down laws that are more strict and more clearly defined”
I thought this was a reversion to older ways of law making. In recent decades government has tended to write laws with “intent” rather than detail, leaving it up the courts, who will follow and try to interpret the law as written (by Parliament) rather than as politicians wished. We have a good example of this now with the new Official Secrets Act, where government itself failed to make China a “threat to national security” and so the spying that happened falls outside of the Act.
However, the downside is that government will need to spend more time on individual bills to cover all cases and get the wording right. I suspect the risk we have is with some laws becoming more “only what is written is permitted, everything else is prohibited”.
“The Lib Dems must take the reins on this situation and launch a fightback against the likes of Jenrick, Farage, and anyone else who wishes to u
Couldn’t agree more – EXCEPT I would say – and we should say – “……….. and anyone else who wishes to undermine our LIBERAL and democratic system..”
I am delighted to see social media ads from the party picking this up.
“In recent decades government has tended to write laws with “intent” rather than detail, leaving it up the courts, who will follow and try to interpret the law as written (by Parliament) rather than as politicians wished. ”
My experience (as a practicing property lawyer) is that Government writes broad brush Bills that are passed by Parliament with much/most of the operative detail detail “filled in” by secondary legislation that receives much less parliamentary scrutiny.
Maybe I did not present a full picture about the tendency for politicians making laws in more detail to overcome the freedom of judges to use discretion in applying the law, but I am convinced this is a threat. Our justice spokesperson, Jess Brown-Fuller, said this week “Our judges must be free to interpret and apply the law without fear of political retribution. Undermining that principle strikes at the very foundation of British democracy, a principle the Liberal Democrats will fiercely defend.” (See that in the Oped on 7 October press releases).
To be governed well by people rather than robots it is necessary for those governing to realise that they are much the same as everyone else. We are all capable of selfish, ignorant and careless acts. The best way to counteract this is to have a system of well resourced constraints. How well these constraints work is shown in hindsight by how well they limited actions by those governing that were not in the country’s interests.