The Lib Dems’ continued occupation of the middle ground hasn’t protected the party’s commitment to positions relating to the rule of law.

Party conferences present us with a weird kind of show-time, which is perhaps why Nick Clegg’s speech to Lib Dem conference put me in mind of The Muppets – and in particular The Muppet Christmas Carol.

In the closing song Scrooge, played by Michael Caine, croons: ‘If you need to know the measure of a man, you simply count his friends.’

Or in the case of the Lib Dems in government, at least look at the company they are – and are not – keeping, if you want to know what sort of law-makers, and superintenders of the rule of law, they’ve been in coalition.

The picture here is very different to that in opposition. Thinking back to my own time working for the Lib Dems on legal policy, the circle of friends, at a point where Lord Irvine was moving to take away civil legal aid from almost anything that moved, was instructive.

The fellow travellers providing briefings, emails, faxes and phone calls were Liberty, personal injury lawyers, firms who acted for charities and trade unions, the Howard League, the Bar Council, legal aid family lawyers, Amnesty – and plenty of end-user groups, including Headway.

There was nothing wrong with them having such open access – the party had common cause with them.

Eduardo Reyes

I wouldn’t expect former colleagues to have kept all their friends when they ‘transitioned’ into government. But I am surprised that they seem to have kept close to none of them.

Readiness to find a casus belli, support for secret courts, curbs on immigration and legal aid cuts – and not least reforms that adversely affect claimants harmed by events far beyond their control – point to a very different circle of legal policy friends these days.

In all this I wouldn’t especially fault Clegg’s centrist instincts. He means to be mid-point between Conservatives and the Labour party, and is.

But occupation of that middle ground used to come with a host of positions relating to the rule of law and people’s rights which served to elevate the party’s importance beyond mere equidistance and power-broking.  

For better or for worse, that isn’t a set of positions I can currently associate with the Lib Dems in coalition – which in legal policy terms strikes me as a shame.

Eduardo Reyes is Gazette features editor

Topics