Determining innocence or guilt by a jury trial is an essential defence of freedom

Determining innocence or guilt by a jury trial is an essential defence of freedom.

The police, prosecutors and judges are all in the pay of the state, influenced by the culture of officialdom and led by members of the establishment.

Starmer has good reason to dislike juries, for they humiliated him when he prosecuted 32 journalists as the Director of Public Prosecutions for the crime of receiving information from officials.

Juries found them not guilty and the final cases collapsed. But it was a concerted assault on the freedom of the press to prevent embarrassment for future Governments, which was only seen off by jury trials.

In the mood of the times, the establishment, the blob was itching to find journalists guilty, and that included judges.

Judges are not immune from political influence, and in recent years activist judges have increasingly become more political.

Baroness Hale, who consistently voted against the last Conservative Government in the House of Lords once, she’d retired, showed off about her political position by wearing a ridiculous brooch when overruling ministers.

The recent tendency to replace ministerial decision-making with judicial opinion has inevitably politicised the judiciary and reduced trust, as they seem to belong to a left-wing ascendancy.

Against this background, appointing Sir Brian Leveson to inquire into reducing trial by jury is like asking Judge Jeffreys to report on the Monmouth Rebellion.

He has little reason to love juries, as he was famously embarrassed by the acquittal of Ken Dodd when he was the lead prosecutor, and he showed in his appalling free speech, undermining the eponymous report into the press that he is no lover of our ancient liberties.

So you see a hater of liberty to decide upon removing further liberties. Juries protect from an over-mighty state, and judges are much less independent than 12 fellow citizens.

Juries sometimes acquit against the evidence when they think the law itself is unjust. Judges do not do that. That is not their business. Judges claim to be uninfluencable.

But when the Government wanted cases hurried up, as with those after the Southport riots, they fell over themselves to comply. Criminal prosecutions have become a feature of modern politics in allied, democratic-friendly countries. It was tried against Donald Trump and is being tried with Madame Le Pen.

It could happen here, in which case the jury is our safeguard, as it proved itself to be in favour of freedom of speech against prosecutor Starmer a decade ago.