The Spectator

Letters | 30 November 2017

Also in Letters: Let’s build timber-framed homes, the Bishop Bell review and making marriage more attractive

issue 02 December 2017

Proven lawyers

Sir: Andrew Watts says that for ‘lawyers in politics, the elimination of risk becomes the highest aim of government. It is not, and should not be’ (Legal challenge, 25 November). Well, up to a point. The last two British prime ministers who were lawyers were Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair, both barristers. Mrs Thatcher’s despatch of the task force to the south Atlantic in 1982 was fraught with risk, as were other defining steps of her time in office. Blair’s premiership will largely be remembered for the invasion of Iraq, a move that could not be described as one from which all risk had been eliminated.

Mr Watts also says that lawyers know only ‘one big thing’ (namely ‘the law’) and suggests that they should be replaced as legislators by journalists. But, as he acknowledges, lawyers know much more than simply ‘law’: divorce lawyers see countless divorces; personal injury lawyers know a lot about how accidents happen; and commercial lawyers spend their lives learning about one business after another.

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