Shadow justice secretary Sadiq Khan was on form with his one-liners at last week’s launch of workplace disputes charity Your Employment Settlement Service. First, he claimed that our much-respected lord chancellor, Chris Grayling, is a man who ‘thinks that the Magna Carta is a champagne bowl’.

Khan then went on to predict that next year he would be revisiting the charity as the ‘actual lord chancellor rather than the shadow’.

Such confidence prompted Obiter to ask whether Khan would be bringing along good news about legal aid and tribunal fees.

In a superb impression of an opposition politician happily sitting on the fence while the lot in power make a complete Horlicks, he said: ‘I am confident that the staged announcements that we will be making in the run-up to the general election about access to justice, including legal aid and employment tribunal fees, will be preferable to the message the present administration is giving out.’

Obiter told him that Dominic Grieve, then in opposition, said roughly the same thing some four years ago. With a fatherly tap on the shoulder, Khan responded: ‘Don’t confuse me with Dominic Grieve.’

We won’t. Yet.

Topics