Rule-of-Law Conservatism: Polishing Magna Carta

Held Together By Latin Tags, Long Lunches, And Judges

Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat file this dispatch from the British political menagerie.

The Rule-of-Law Conservative believes the country runs on dusty courtrooms, well-bound statutes, and the quiet menace of a magistrate at lunchtime in Lincoln’s Inn. Editor Alan Nafzger of the Editor’s Desk at prat.uk presents the field guide, with help from the UK Judiciary and The Law Society.

Twenty Tells: Spotting The Rule-of-Law Conservative On A British High Street

1. Refers to Magna Carta the way some men refer to a favourite hymn.
2. Maintains a fantasy in which the Lord Chief Justice gives him a nod.
3. Holds any law worth keeping has at least one Latin tag.
4. Has explained, at a wedding, that the rule of law is also infrastructure.
5. Refers to judicial activism as the slow drift.
6. Treats any sentence beginning with no person shall as a small national poem.
7. Maintains a binder of leading cases sorted by century.
8. Refers to barristers as the dignified end of the profession.
9. Holds any new statute should be tested against an old one for politeness.
10. Has explained the unwritten constitution is in fact very heavily underlined.
11. Refers to the Supreme Court as the highest committee in the land.
12. Treats any government legislation that is rushed as a sort of bad weather.
13. Maintains a soft spot for habeas corpus and a stronger one for due process.
14. Refers to Strasbourg as the office that occasionally rings.
15. Holds any constitutional reform should sleep on it.
16. Has explained the rule of law is fundamentally a quiet hum.
17. Refers to the legal profession as the only honest priesthood.
18. Treats any breach of separation of powers as a personal insult.
19. Maintains a fantasy in which The Law Society sends a thank you.
20. Believes the country is held together by judges, jurors, and a long lunch.

Editor’s Note

If any of this rings a bell, you have either been to a Tory association AGM, a Reform UK rally above a leisure centre, or both. More dispatches at govna.uk and the parent site prat.uk. For a second opinion that is also wrong, see The Daily Mash.

SOURCE: https://prat.uk/category/politics/

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