Rewarding the truth

If Lord Woolf is discovered ’orribly murdered in his cellar, the editor of the Daily Mail may well find himself helping police with their inquiries. There will certainly be a motive: the Lord Chief Justice is not a popular figure with the self-professed keeper of Middle England values. In response to his lordship’s proposal to reduce the effective sentence for murder to ten years in some instances where the accused admits guilt, the Mail ventured: ‘Rarely has a Lord Chief Justice seemed so smug, self-satisfied and remote while the law he is supposed to uphold sinks deeper into disrepute.’ Comparisons spring to mind with Nero, twanging away on his lyre as Rome burned around him. Yet again, the paper seems to say, our safety is threatened by some pinko law lord who sees the route to his own greatness in making magnanimous gestures towards murderous rogues from whom he, unlike the rest of us, is insulated in the corner of some port-soaked gentlemen’s club.