Graham Ogilvy

Scottish Legal News will not be offering a prize to the first solicitor to lodge the Brandon Lewis defence. Any plea of “My client did break the law, your lordship, but only in a very specific and limited way” is unlikely to impress the bench.

It certainly underwhelmed our European partners who were already wary of a government led by a man described by the normally understated former Attorney General Dominic Grieve as “pathological liar”. For many in Europe, it comes as further proof of Albion’s perfidy.

Yesterday’s admission followed the resignation of Sir Jonathan Jones QC, treasury solicitor and permanent secretary at the Government Legal Department who felt he could not be a party to such a blatant disregard for the law.

Simon Davis, president of the Law Society of England and Wales has rightly observed: “The rule of law is not negotiable. Our commitment to the rule of law is key to attracting international business to the UK and to maintaining faith in our justice system.”

In many parts of the world Britain’s much-vaunted attachment to the rule of law has always been doubted. Brittania waiving the rules is hardly a new phenomenon.

But the current blatant breach of international law will bring comfort to the very autocrats and dictators that Britain seeks to contain.

It is the inter-governmental equivalent of the antics of Dominic Cummings, Johnson’s deranged consiglieri, who infamously saw fit to breach the breakdown rules that his government had introduced – ‘a one rule for them and one rule for us’ attitude borne of entitled arrogance.

It will further tarnish Britain’s international reputation and embolden the extreme right-wing populists and racists in the UK who despise law and order and are already emboldened by Brexit.

And it comes a week after an attack on ‘activist lawyers’ by a British government which has packed the House of Lords with cronies and relations, awarded lucrative Covid-related contracts to associates, launched a process aimed at restricting the terms of judicial reviews and seems intent on weakening the powers of the devolved nations.

Traditional Tories who take ‘the rule of law’ seriously, like the Conservative chair of the Commons Justice Select Committee, Sir Bob Neill, who put Lewis on the spot yesterday, are appalled at this breath-taking contempt for international treaties. But there are not enough of them and too many, who know fine that what is being done in their name is wrong, are content to remain silent to pay the school fees.

We live in dark times when our lawmakers become lawbreakers.

And where does this leave ‘our precious union’? Those who parrot that well-worn phrase are, at the same time putting it in jeopardy and growing numbers of Scots feel that they are being squeezed between the forces of English nationalism and Scottish nationalism.

When Boris Johnson promised the British people that his Brexit deal was ‘oven-ready’, he neglected to tell them that they were the turkeys.

Graham Ogilvy