Establishment ‘cover-ups’ are the real reason we’re losing trust in the state
Failures in criminal justice combined with zealous progressivism suggest our institutions care more about ideology than justice.
A few years ago I found myself in conversation with a high court judge, who recounted her recent ruling in a sensitive case involving multiethnic dispute. “It got me my front page at The Guardian,” she purred, visibly pleased. I have no reason to doubt that the case was properly decided. But her remark did liberate me from the last traces of the illusion I had too long entertained that judges can transcend the moral imaginary of their social milieu and never crave the approval of the right-minded. Judges, like the rest of us, inhabit a dense network of moral norms.
Moreover, they are, like other professionals, not magically immune to making serious errors. In an astonishing press conference on the Lucy Letby case, Dr Shoo Lee, the author of a paper on which the prosecution’s case heavily relied, noted that the prosecution had made no effort to contact him and had misapplied the conclusions of his paper.
The Court of Appeal had ruled that since Dr Lee’s evidence could have been called during the original trial, it was not “fresh” evidence. As Sir David Davis put it, the implication of the ruling was that “If your lawyer makes a mistake, hard luck, you are banged up for life.”
Should Letby’s conviction be overturned, it would echo the Post Office Horizon scandal’s devastating exposure of institutional failure. It would also continue to erode confidence in judges, who are now less trusted than doctors or teachers. A YouGov poll shows that 31 per cent report declining trust in judges, particularly among older people, the working-class, and Leave voters.
Such failures breed contagious mistrust for our expert class, as witnessed in growing scepticism about Covid-19 policies and lockdown measures. When institutions demonstrate incompetence in matters of life and death, while simultaneously projecting certainty in ideological causes, public faith inevitably crumbles. The pattern is clear: catastrophic failures in criminal justice, combined with zealous enforcement of progressive orthodoxies, creates a perception that our institutions care more about ideology than justice …
Read the full article in The Telegraph.