Woke lawyers and green activists will run the country if Labour get in – we should be afraid of their arrogant zeal
THE rule of law is part of the bedrock of civilisation.
But in modern Britain, rule by lawyers represents the very opposite.
The domination of our civic landscape by a swelling army of judicial activists is a menace to our national integrity and democracy, with public policy increasingly decided not by the ballot box, but by the ideological whims and cynical self-interests of an unelected, unaccountable courtroom elite.
This contempt for our democratic freedoms is shared by eco-demonstrators like the mob from Greenpeace who invaded the Prime Minister’s residence in Yorkshire last week.
Brimming with arrogant zeal, they think they have the right to harass, disrupt and intimidate in the name of their cause.
What makes this alliance of woke lawyers and green campaigners so terrifying is the power it will hold if Labour wins the next election, for Sir Keir Starmer’s party is tied by ideology, money and personnel to both wings of this left-wing pincer movement.
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Vulnerable lives at risk
That was epitomised yesterday by this paper’s revelation that Alistair Strathern, Labour’s candidate in the forthcoming Mid-Bedfordshire by-election, is linked to Greenpeace and once played a zombie in one of the group’s tiresome stunts.
In addition, his partner is a political officer for Greenpeace. As Cabinet minister Grant Shapps put it: “One minute they are climbing the PM’s house, the next they’ve got a Labour rosette on.”
The continuing farce over illegal immigration is a graphic illustration of what has gone wrong.
This year alone, 15,000 people have made the crossing of the English Channel in small boats, following the record total of 45,000 last year.
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There is nothing compassionate about this anarchy.
The chaos puts vulnerable lives at risk, creates an enormous injustice for migrant families who play by the rules and destroys public faith in our institutions.
Yet every attempt by ministers to get a grip on the crisis is thwarted by lawyers, often acting in league with campaigners and the Labour Party, who do not believe in rigorous border controls at all.
In an attempt to reduce the £6million-a-day cost of housing asylum seekers, the Government has moored a huge barge off the Dorset coast at Portland.
The first users of this accommodation went on board on Monday, but the numbers were far lower than ministers hoped, due to legalistic manoeuvres designed to undermine the whole exercise.
It was reported that 20 asylum claimants, under the protection of radical pressure group Care 4 Calais, had refused to join the vessel because they have a “fear of water”, even though, laughably, some arrived here by small boats.
But that is typical of the absurdities generated by the left-wing lawyers and hardliners on a mission to promote free movement.
Some are driven by pure greed and exploitation, like the three law firms exposed last week which were said to be assisting people to make false asylum claims in return for huge sums of cash.
But the rot may extend right through the sector, which is why the Government was fully justified in establishing a new special task force to root out more of these abusers.
In challenging ministers, others are motivated by a determination to signal their virtue or impose their political views.
That outlook can be seen in the repeated protests and attempts in the courts to prevent deportations of even hardened foreign criminals or block the official plan to use Rwanda, in Africa, as a removal centre for illegal migrants.
One of the most sickening features of this activism is how well-meaning laws are deployed for twisted purposes.
So modern slavery legislation is used as a shield by eastern European gangsters, just as the Human Rights Act has become a charter for criminals.
Just as offensively, we have to fork out for this vast racket.
According to the think tank Migration Watch, an average of £35million per year has been spent on legal aid for asylum seekers over the past decade.
At the heart of this nexus of lawyers and campaigners is the Labour Party.
So many of Labour’s top figures are lawyers.
In addition to Starmer, their number included David Lammy, Shadow Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds, Shadow International Trade Secretary Nick Thomas-Symonds and National Campaign Coordinator Shabana Mahmood.
The tightness of the relationship is mirrored in the support given to Labour by law firms, such as the £94,000 of “services, donations, gifts, benefits and other payments” provided by the city giant DLA Piper since 2019.
In the same vein, one of the party’s biggest donors, green entrepreneur Dale Vince, also bankrolls Just Stop Oil.
As the legal profession has dramatically expanded in recent years, so it has shifted to the left.
In the 1970s there were 33,000 barristers and solicitors in Britain.
Posturing as green warrior
Today there are 175,000, and many of the newer recruits are drawn to this occupation because they see it as a vehicle to enact their politics, especially on environmentalism, equality and immigration.
In March this year, 120 self-righteous lawyers issued a declaration stating that they will not prosecute climate protesters — like the Just Stop Oil and the Extinction Rebellion crews — or act for companies involved with fossil fuels.
This pompous “declaration of conscience” ran against one of the key principles of the British legal profession: That lawyers should take cases for which they are qualified if they are available, rather than picking and choosing their workload.
That principle exists for a very good reason: To ensure that every client, no matter how distasteful, has the right to representation.
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But posturing as a green warrior means more to the modern breed of woke lawyer than the maintenance of an ethos that has served our country well.
That is why the thought of this lot holding the levers of power under Labour is so disturbing.