Reading between the lines

Chris Grayling, the new Lord Chancellor, had the difficult task of restricting Boris Johnson’s front page coverage at the Conservative Party conference. He succeeded, falling back on a conference standard—householders’ rights against intruders.

Interviewed on BBC television, Grayling admitted that these cases were “relatively rare”. He was also a bit vague on how far his proposals would go in allowing the use of disproportionate force by a householder. In particular, he declined to comment on the application of his proposed law on cases like Munir Hussain. This was a little surprising since he got considerable publicity in December 2009 for bringing up the proposal in the context of that case. Hussain and his brother chased an intruder down the street and beat him with a cricket bat and a metal pole so severely that he had permanent brain damage and was found unfit to plead on the charge of burglary. They were given custodial sentences. Grayling’s instructions were clearly to repeat the mantra of “raising the