The overtly adversarial posture of ruling establishment governments toward their own citizenry is springing up in Europe again. Not for the first time, the UK has taken center stage in the latest installment of what has become an ongoing and enduring phenomenon. And the deeply divisive issue at play at the moment touches on the very heart of cherished English legal and cultural tradition dating back centuries.
British Justice Secretary David Lammy, who also serves as Deputy Prime Minister under Labour Party PM Keir Starmer, is seeking to eliminate jury trials in the UK for all but the most serious cases. Legislation to enact such measures on March 10 cleared its first parliamentary hurdle, surviving a House of Commons preliminary vote.
Lammy insists the radical change is necessary to clear a severe backlog in criminal cases waiting to be heard. His plan would scrap jury trials for any defendant charged with crimes that carry a likely sentence of three years or less. Outrage has been widespread.
“[M]inisters are planning to scrap jury trials for all but the most serious crimes – or, more accurately, to gut one of the most fundamental features of the British constitution that has existed for more than 800 years,” Michael Curzon at The European Conservative website succinctly put it in November when the effort was first gaining traction.
From Magna Carta to My Feelings
Medieval England is hailed as the originator of the bedrock Western principle that the general rule of law holds sway over the whims of personal tyranny. It all began with the signing of Magna Carta in 1215, which restricted the power of the king and made even his divinely-anointed royal head subject to the law. As Americans are witnessing, to an alarming degree, with the rapid rise of a politicized judiciary during the highly polarized Trump Era, individual judges in 2026 regularly make rulings based on surging popular emotions of the day rather than settled precedent and justify them with unabashed nods to personal belief instead of respect for the overarching rule of law.
This is far and away the most glaring concern with the proposed judicial changes in the UK.
“Juries have been the last line of defense against the authoritarian cancel mob,” the conservative-leaning Free Speech Union wrote in a November X post. Keep in mind, this organization is speaking from a Britain that imprisons citizens for posting political opinions online that are deemed verboten. “This move is about power, not saving costs. Nothing in our present national situation warrants abandoning an 800-year-old right: that in a court of law, your peers decide if you’re guilty, not the state.”
So the question becomes: Why this direct assault on a hallowed tradition, and why now? It’s not hard to see what the staunchly pro-European Union Lammy and his progressive political colleagues in England are up to. Ed Davey, Leader of the Liberal Democrats, a party closely aligned ideologically with Labour, has just stated that England needs a “new” Magna Carta. The only proper conclusion to take from that is that Davey believes the “old” Magna Carta needs to go.
Of course, he didn’t put it quite that way. Much like the brazen appeals to “limiting free speech in order to save free speech” routinely peddled by ruling establishment figures in Europe today, the fundamental rights enshrined in Magna Carta are said to require serious revamping if they are to remain relevant in the modern UK.
Building the Bureaucratic Machinery of Tyranny in the UK
“Sir Ed Davey has called for Britain to adopt a new written constitution, arguing it is essential to make the nation ‘resistant to authoritarian creeps like Donald Trump,’” The Independent newspaper reported March 15. “Speaking at the Liberal Democrat spring conference, the party leader advocated for a ‘new Magna Carta’ to safeguard the UK's fundamental commitments to human rights, the [National Health Service], and freedom of expression from potential erosion....”
Leaning on generic phrases that allow full room for elasticity in actual practice is the calling card of credentialed establishment figures promoting “transformative” change in the West today. It is the most telling trait of the self-described “defender of democracy.”
Davey, like Lammy, a devout supporter of the European Union, exemplifies this dangerous attitude to the hilt.
The new constitution will guarantee “the rule of law, with the courts always independent of political interference,” and “a commitment to universal human rights that cannot be ripped up at the whim of a populist like [Reform Party Leader Nigel] Farage,” the paper quotes Davey as murkily espousing.
Again, note the appeal to contemporary politicized emotionalism that accompanies the vague cliches about core basic rights.
The goal: “a democracy that is transparent, accountable, and resistant to the authoritarian creep we see in other countries, and resistant to authoritarian creeps like Donald Trump,” Davey asserts.
This major progressive British politician is calling for a vast transformation of the UK legal system, and he is evoking pure political antagonism in doing so. What can go wrong?
“[T]he administration of justice must be a non-ideological space. Jury trial unites us all for a simple reason: it is the most powerful instrument and engine of social justice that this country has ever invented,” Conservative Member of Parliament Geoffrey Cox declared in expressing his opposition to Lammy’s scheme. “It is a safeguard against oppression. It is a built-in defense against establishment and administrative power.”
And that is precisely why the ruling progressives of England, the unblushing champions of the total administrative state and of using the machinery of government as a political weapon, are so keen on wiping it away.
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