RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: Just Stop Everything chaos? Bring on Rumpole for the prosecution!
Lawyers who refuse to prosecute disruptive anarchists are unlikely to face disciplinary action, the Bar Council has indicated. Sounds about right. The Old Bill still remain reluctant to nick Just Stop Everything 'slow marchers' bringing traffic to a halt in every day. So the notion that barristers won't prosecute these headbangers in the highly unlikely event of any of them actually being arrested is entirely consistent with the warped state of so-called criminal justice in Basket Case Britain, where ostentatiously advertising fashionable virtue is apparently more important than upholding the law. Appearing before a Commons committee on Wednesday, Met Commissioner took exception to deputy chairman Lee Anderson's typically robust and 100 per cent accurate accusation that he was guilty of dereliction of duty sending Scotland Yard's elite skateboard squad to give the 'demonstrators' a police escort, instead of cracking heads and feeling a few fake-fur collars. How dare an elected politician criticise an appointed public servant for not doing his job? I'm only surprised that Rowley hasn't already gone running to ASBO, or whatever the chief police officers' club calls itself this week, claiming that Anderson was 'bullying' him and must be cancelled, Raab-style, without further delay. To my mind, Anderson a no-nonsense former Nottinghamshire miner didn't go far enough. He spoke plainly for the decent, law-abiding majority who have had a bellyful of entitled Left-wing, polar-bear-hugging lunatics going out of their way to make people's lives a misery and are disgusted at the police's shameful complicity. Rowley is maintaining he doesn't have the legal authority to stop the anarchy on London's streets even though his interpretation of the law is utterly rejected by the proper copper who runs Greater Manchester Police. Instead, Rowley's rozzers stand around gawping impotently at half a dozen space cadets blocking the Strand, while simultaneously threatening with arrest anyone who attempts to shift them out of the way. Perhaps it's already time he was replaced by the GMP's Stephen Watson, who sees his job as serving the paying public, not the trendy Guardianista, metropolitan 'elite'. It has been an inauspicious week for Rowley, who despite constantly complaining about 'lack of resources' did manage to rustle up an hilarious terracotta (or, rather, hi-viz) army of Plods on foot and pushbikes to 'protect', North Korean-style, Dishi Rishi's over-the-top motorcade. That's another one I don't know whether to file under You Couldn't Make It Up or Mind How You Go. Look, I'm sorry to bang on about this, but policing in London is in crisis and Rowley, far from being a new broom, seems to be part of the problem. He already appears to be preoccupied with metro/politico obsessions which is presumably how he got the job in the first place, after five years of filling his boots in the private sector. His arrogant dismissal of Anderson deputy chairman of a governing party with a 70-odd seat majority harked back to Ian 'Vote Labour' Blair sneering at the Greater London Assembly a few years ago, when they dared to call him to account. That's probably enough Plod for now, so thanks for bearing with me. When I started writing this column yesterday morning, it was intended to be all about the smug lawyers who refuse to prosecute the climate clowns. But the attitude of the police and the Left-wing legal establishment are intertwined. You can't separate their mindsets. Some people may think that the Bar Council is the band Paul Weller formed after The Jam split up. It's actually the professional body which is supposed to represent barristers. One of its core principles is the 'cab-rank' system, which insists that lawyers must take whichever cases are sent to them regardless of merit, or individual prejudice. My colleague Leo McKinstry reminds me that one of our most distinguished barristers, former Ulster Unionist MP Richard Ferguson, represented both the SAS and the IRA including some of the Birmingham Six and the Brighton Bomber Patrick Magee. No matter how much it must sometimes have gone against the grain of his personal beliefs, he spoke for his clients with absolute professionalism and commitment. Sadly, those values no longer apply to the new breed of activist barristers, who see their job as furthering their own political agendas, often under the guise of yuman rites. Nor, it would seem, to Stephen Kenny, chairman of the Bar Council's ethics committee, who has told his members: 'If you are genuinely afflicted by conscience . . . you do not have to act.' This follows a declaration signed by 170 barristers, led by fox-clubber Jolyon Maugham KC, that they will not prosecute anyone from Just Stop Everything. KC and the Sunshine Band wish us to know they are on the side of those who block roads and vandalise buildings and works of art. Look at me, Mum! Not that any of them is ever likely to be asked to prosecute. But there is an important principle at stake that of the neutrality of the Bar. Even that most famous Old Bailey defence hack Horace Rumpole agreed to prosecute once, because he believed it was his sworn professional duty. So, too, should KC and the Sunshine Band if a CPS brief flutters their way. Sadly, especially since the setting up of New Labour's Supreme Court, the legal process in Britain has become excessively politicised over everything from Brexit to criminal damage committed in the name of stopping climate change. Rumpole would be appalled. His young protege Mizz Liz Probert might have signed Jolyon's round robin letter to the Guardian, but the great Horace would never have betrayed his noble calling. Even if Just Stop Everything stopped him getting to his bottle of Chateau Thames Embankment in Pomeroy's Wine Bar, or glued themselves to the Gloucester Road, preventing She Who Must Be Obeyed hitting the lamb chops aisle, he'd also have been first to leap to their defence. Mind you, old darling, one suspects that in those circumstances he'd have been more than happy to prosecute. A lamb has been found in the back of a car on a Glasgow motorway with ten grands worth of heroin and cocaine. Sure it wasnt a motorhome? Weve had Covid-19, bird flu, swine fever and now, wait for it, dog flu. A study of 4,000 infected dogs in China where else? warns the illness could spread to humans. Sounds depressingly familiar. Bring on the next lockdown. Actually, it may already be here. I went to my doctor this week with a sore throat and he asked how I felt. Ruff, ruff!