Roger Smith

Jack Straw took the opportunity of his retirement from Labour’s front bench to publicise his forthcoming memoirs...

The Coalition government will not be remembered for its policies on civil liberties or the constitution. The period from the election until the autumn will be seen as the phoney, or in Churchill’s words, “twilight” war. To come is the spending blitzkrieg that will define this government. We need to revive a theme equivalent to that current in 1939: no indiscriminate bombing of civilians.

This is the second of three articles on the policies of the coalition government. The first dealt with its approach to civil liberties. This covers matters relating to the constitution. The third will cover cuts. The articles are arranged in order of praise.

Cambridge looked characteristically beautiful during the Legal Services Research Centre’s 8th annual conference. Given the global nature of the recession, attendance held up pretty well—bolstered by a somewhat disproportionately large delegation from Australian legal centres.

Let us begin with the good news. This is the first of three articles on the coalition government’s policy relating to the law and the constitution. We start with civil liberties. There has been a lot of talk about whether the budget will be a “game changer”: the coalition’s programme for action on civil liberties certainly is. David Blunkett and John Reid, the most macho of Labour home secretaries, should be turning in their political graves. The coalition’s policy on civil liberties says as much about their failure as it does about the coalition’s own success.

Lord Lester is a shrewd and experienced campaigner with an eye for where progress can be made. Publication of his draft Defamation Bill was characteristically timely. Heat is building up on this issue.

The country had a crash course on constitutional constraints as Nick Clegg and David Cameron crafted their deal after the election.

The Daily Mail was keen on Lord Judge’s Judicial Studies Board lecture. It linked his caution on the use of judgments of the Strasbourg European Court of Human Rights to David Cameron’s policies to strengthen British sovereignty. Lord Judge himself, though he uttered the usual judicial disclaimers (“political debate is not for a holder of judicial office”), can hardly have been surprised. He dealt with politically touchy matters—the role of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) and that of the European Court of Justice. On the former, he entered the murky waters of the authority to be accorded by the domestic courts to judgments of the Strasbourg court.