158. Baroness Hale: The Supreme Court, Boris Johnson, and the ECHR

26:38Most people who are eligible for judicial appointments aren't party politicians. Anyway, some are, but very few are. And I could definitely say, and so could my colleagues say, that we did not know the party politics, if any, of our colleagues on the House of Lords and Supreme Court, or indeed the Court of Appeal and whatever. I mean, some people had been active in party politics in the past, but were so no longer. But most of us didn't know. And that's how it should be, because that means you can make your decisions according to what the law requires you to do and not what your party political sympathies require you to do.

27:15ECHR. ECHR. Okay, I'll talk about that. I don't mind doing that. It's one of the few subjects which definitely have been turned into a party political thing basically this week that I am nevertheless prepared to say that I think it would be a disaster if the United Kingdom pulled out of the European Convention on Human Rights. And it is all driven by concern about migration, two aspects to migration, one of which is alleged difficulty in deporting foreign national criminals. The other is people arriving here irregularly, without the permission that they need or staying here without the permission, which are two rather separate questions.

28:00But looking at the figures, there's been a report recently from the Bonivero Human Rights Institute in Oxford that said that successful challenges to deportation of foreign national criminals are incredibly rare. There's some figures from my great hero and friend David Gork in an article. He says there have been 29 cases involving deportations from the UK heard by the Strasbourg court since 1980. And the UK has won 16 of them. And none of the 13 defeats has been in the past five years. I mean, It's astonishing how little. And then, as you say, there's another figure that it's something like 3 % of cases are even remotely affected by these kinds of things.

28:45Yes, I mean, it's a tiny number. I mean, I think there's more to do with administrative inefficiency in these things. When I was dealing with this sort of issue at an appellate level, the inefficiency in actually recognizing when people had got to the end of their sentence here, and therefore should be instantly deported was staggering. So I think that's much more of a problem, administrative structures. Clearly with the people arriving here, again, you're not going to find that most of them are going to be able to resist being removed. It's not deported, it's removed because of family ties here, which is the main thing that people are bothered about.

29:32They might be able to resist it on the basis that they risk death or persecution to wherever they might be removed to. But that is a general principle of the law that doesn't depend upon the ECHR, although it's there in the ECHR. It's also in the Refugee Convention. And Conventions on Torture and Child Rights and many other things. All sorts of other international instruments. I think it's your main point in the law on our side is that this is about people's understanding or lack of understanding that the law is there for them, for their rights to be protected. The law is being projected at the moment as something that's going to be against you.

30:12Well, exactly. And it isn't. Most of the time it isn't. And if you don't want it to be for foreign national criminals or for people arriving here irregularly, well, then it doesn't have to be. for the reasons that we've just been talking about. But there is another thing I think that really worries me. If the politicians are seriously concerned about those two issues, the first thing to do is to persuade parliament to pass legislation constraining the court's use of the ECHR in those situations, which in fact has already been done with foreign national criminals. They could do that. And then wait and see.

30:55If it's an act of parliament, the courts have to respect it. It's nonsense. The courts have to respect what's in an act of parliament. The ECHR is not stopping them doing that. And if the courts declare it to be incompatible with the convention rights, which they probably wouldn't do, it would depend on how it was done. But anyway, if that was done, there's nothing parliament has to do about it. It can wait and see. And then if it goes off to the Strasbourg court and they lose in the Strasbourg court, again, although they're committed by the treaty to putting right that situation, they can sometimes dig their heels in or find a much more limited solution, as happened with prisoners voting.

31:35Throwing the whole caboose out to deal with one problem seems to me to be wrong. But this is why I asked you earlier about the relationship between the two, because this feels like a situation where politics is overwhelming the law. So when we read those figures out, there's no rational explanation for what is now becoming the policy of the main opposition party and would be implemented if they were in government. And I just wonder whether in that context, figures like you, you can do it now because you're retired, but people who are active in the law, should they not get more involved in some of these political debates?

32:09Well, judges, difficult. Yeah. I think serving judges have got to maintain their political neutrality and not engage in matters of party political controversy. Retired judges, we still have to be, I think, careful and respectful of principle, which is what I have been trying to be. But the legal profession generally, I mean, I was at an event which happened to be just before this announcement, the Human Rights Lawyers Association, which was being addressed by Robert Spano, who was president of the European Court of Human Rights for a few years, now retired. And he was revealing all of these inaccuracies in the way in which the whole thing is portrayed.

32:54Of course, everybody there in the room was in favor. And so organisations like that should definitely be standing up and they should be taking on whatever legal advice the Conservative Party has got. I mean, obviously, I haven't yet read that legal advice, so I do not know quite what the foundation is. I mean, I know the headlines, but I don't know what the foundation is. The foundations don't speak to the headline. OK, Lady Hale, Alistair, quick break and then back for more. This episode is brought to you by Revolut Business, the all-in-one account to manage your finances. Now, politics has its share of bad deals, trade summits, late-night negotiations.

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35:29The rest is entertainment, the rest is history, the rest is politics, The rest is classified. And of course, the rest is football. The Rest is Quiz is packed with over 1000 brilliant questions to test your trivia knowledge against your friends and family. And from 1st of October to the 31st, you'll be able to preorder a copy from Waterstones for half price using the code REST2025. REST2025. Capital R, that is. Pre-order your copy of the REST is Quiz by Goalhanger from Waterstone using the code REST with a capital R 2025. Now. You made a point, which is that actually leaving the ECHR wouldn't be enough.

36:16You'd have to leave the Refugee Convention and conventions on torture and child rights. And of course, there is a movement, particularly in the United States, to say any form of international agreement of any sort is an intrusion on our sovereignty. In fact, they've just rejected the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations, which are non-binding aspirations to try to develop good water supply for all, good education for all on the grounds that it's an assault on American sovereignty. Is there a good way of explaining why you can't end up defaulting to the position that I fear reform and increasingly conservatives are going towards, which is saying any form of international treaty, any form of international law is limiting our sovereignty and we're not going to have international law?

37:06But it's ridiculous. The longest standing, probably, international treaties are treaties dealing with things like carriage of goods by sea, which is dealt with by an international treaty to which almost everybody who carries goods by sea observes. And it's the way, the whole of traffic by sea. There are similar carriage of goods and people by air depend upon international treaties about this. There are so many things that are governed by international treaties. And the reason that you sign up to them is that you realise that while you give something up, you gain something in return. In fact, carriage of goods by sea is something from which the United Kingdom has gained enormously because most contracts for the carriage of goods by sea are governed by English law and therefore are, if there's a dispute, adjudicated on, according to English law, either in English courts or in courts of arbitration which apply English law.

38:07So there are huge benefits from international treaties. There's a quid pro quo. The idea that it's giving up sovereignty is just ridiculous. Can I just sort of develop that from there? Presumably the point is that if we say we're not going to have anything to do with the European Court and Human Rights and we can maltreat any foreign national in our country, then a British national in somebody else's country could be horribly mistreated and we would have nothing to appeal to. Well, that would be, I suppose, the case, although that British national might be able to appeal to the courts of the country in question, but the English authorities' government would not have the same opportunity to say to the foreign country, you shouldn't be doing that because it's contrary to a treaty to which we are both parties.

38:48And that's a powerful argument. I mean, diplomacy works in a lot of cases. People tend to forget that international relations do actually depend upon countries talking to one another. And we set up the CHR, partly driven by Britain and by conservative politicians as well as Labour politicians, because we believe that protecting people's rights in Europe was morally correct and also contributed to peace in Europe. It's part of the post-war settlement. And we seem to be losing that as well. That's definitely the case, that it was part of the post-war settlement. There is a view that, yes, Winston Churchill was in favour of the Council of Europe and David Maxwell Fyfe, of course, was partly responsible for drafting the European Convention.

39:31But it was actually adhered to in the last days of the Labour government, slightly less enthusiastic about international treaties, I think, than others. Yes, I think they were slightly less enthusiastic, but they signed up to it. And I think part of that was there's a huge tradition of civil liberties in this country. Huge tradition. Now, people are very proud of Magna Carta for all the wrong reasons, but they're proud of all sorts of other things as well. And they thought that we had all of these liberties already. A very well-known legal historian has called it the export theory of human rights.

40:09That we were okay signing up to it because it already represented our law. And it's a good idea for Europe to be signing up to it because they need it. And then we don't like it when it comes back and bites us. Well, because it turned out that our law wasn't as perfect as all that. And one of the reasons is, of course, that Parliament can interfere with it. So Parliament can take away our liberties. Can we move on to the case that made you kind of famous? Can I use that word? You became famous on the back of Brexit and Boris Johnson's prorogation of Parliament. And I completely hear what you say, and I 100 % accept that you're sitting there as a judge.

40:49But whether you liked it or not, you were sitting in an unbelievably political environment. Did that have any impact on you at all? And I'm going to come in very quickly on this, because this was absolutely the end of my political career, blew up in the middle of what you were doing. He doesn't blame you, do you? So I was running against Boris Johnson, against the idea of the prorogation of parliament. I was saying when he was running for the leadership, the only way he's going to be able to get his mad Brexit deal through is by locking the doors on Parliament. This is like something out of the 17th century.

41:22And the maths is obvious. The only way of passing law needs to be to work with Parliament. You need to negotiate with Parliament, get it through. And he was denying when I was running for leadership against him that he'd do it. He and Dominic Raab would say, you know, I'm scaremongering. It's absolute nonsense they were going to provoke Parliament. Sure enough, they can't get their bill through and they try to shut the doors on parliament so people like me and ken clark and david gork who'd voted against this bill suddenly face the possibility that we're not going to be able to vote and there was this extraordinary moment where i remember boris standing up in the house of commons shouting about us and them and who was on the side of the people you know going full full populist because you had ruled that parliament needed to meet again and that he couldn't do it can you explain to us your ruling and the thoughts around the logic of it?

42:08Well, I can do my best. Obviously, there's a 70 paragraph judgment, you know, which explains in detail why. And there's a summary, which is the thing I read out, which also explains slightly less detailed way. We were, of course, aware of the atmosphere, the very, people call it febrile, but that had been even more so with our first case about Brexit, the first case brought by Mrs. Miller about whether Theresa May could give notice to leave the European Union without parliamentary approval. This is the one that led to the Daily Mail, Enemies of the People headline. Yes. And so the atmosphere there had been almost worse, partly because of that incident, than it was when it came to the prorogation case.

42:52The thing about the prorogation case from a judicial point of view was that there were two cases. There was one brought in England, which was decided by the High Court of England and Wales, presided over by the Lord Chief Justice, which said, oh, this is too political. It's not justiciable. We can't go there. There was another case brought in Scotland in front of the Scottish equivalent, where the inner house of the court of session, presided over by the Lord President, who is the Scottish equivalent of the Lord Chief Justice, said, not only is it justiciable, because this is a matter of constitutional law.

43:29I can decide. Yes, exactly. And we're going to hold that it was unlawful. And not only that it was unlawful, that it was of no effect. So Parliament had not been prorogued. So you've got an English court saying it had been prorogued and a Scottish court saying it hadn't been prorogued. They couldn't both be right. There's only one Parliament. And so obviously we had to decide between those two. And we decided that the Scots were right to hold it justiciable, right basically in their approach to the principles. We did not agree with them that it was necessary. Well, they held the object of the exercise.

44:09They used the lovely word stymie to stymie Parliament doing its job at an inconvenient time. Which is the way it felt to me. Yes. Well, that may or may not have been the actual motivation. But we decided that we didn't have to decide that because if the effect of what was being done by the government was to prevent parliament from doing its constitutional job, well, then that was just as unlawful, irrespective of what the motive was. What did the government claim its motive was? It never did. So it tried to suggest our motive wasn't to stop parliament voting, but we're not going to tell you what our motive was.

44:41No, it didn't suggest anything about motive at all. except that the Queen's speech had been arranged for October the 14th. So why not prorogue Parliament five weeks before that? At exactly the time when the clock was running down. Absolutely, when it was running down on whatever. So that Brexit would have happened automatically. Yeah, it would have happened automatically without a deal, which is obviously what Parliament was trying to prevent. We didn't think it was... Well, we didn't have any evidence one way or the other. We could make guesses about what the object was, but no, there was absolutely no evidence.

45:12It was just this memo saying, why don't we prorogue Parliament five weeks for? Of course, we had evidence that the normal length of prorogation before a Queen's speech is a maximum of five days. You know, we really don't need more than that. So it was obviously inexplicable. When you're sitting there as a judge, do you ever look? So there's an eminent lawyer putting the case for the government. Do you ever look there and just think, you don't believe this, you know there's no case here? And how do you kind of handle that? Well, of course, that happens, whether it's for the government or whether it's for the other side.

45:53Your job as a judge is to decide between two or three or four competing sets of arguments. And you sometimes think, for any lawyer, do they really, really, in their heart of hearts, believe that this is right? And of course, we had some very good lawyers appearing in both of the Brexit cases and a lot of argument. And we're trying to focus on the arguments rather than... And you mentioned the Gina Miller case and the Daily Mail headline, The Enemies of the People. With photographs of you, is that right? On the front cover? Oh, no, no, the photographs. But what happened with that is that the High Court, headed by the then Lord Chief Justice, plus his second in command, the Marshal of the Rolls, plus a senior appeal court judge, the three of them, there were photographs of the three of them, quite large photographs, under the banner headline, Enemies of the People.

46:48Well, that was pretty shocking, really, I'm afraid. In fact, it was very shocking. But what was more shocking was that there is a member of the government who swears an oath. and I watched it being sworn to uphold the independence of the judiciary and the rule of law. And that's the Lord Chancellor. That's right. That was Liz Truss. That's right. And what she should have done straight away is to say, we have a free press in this country. Within the limits of the law, you can publish what you like. But it's my job as the member of the government who's sworn to uphold the independence of the judiciary and the rule of law to tell you that you're wrong.

47:22These are not enemies of the people. These are people who've sworn a judicial oath and they are acting in accordance with their judicial oath. And if they happen to have got the answer wrong, the Supreme Court will put them right. Such an easy script, but she didn't. This was the moment at which I really began to break with the Conservative Party direction it was going because I remember that. I also remember Boris Johnson after your ruling, Fetke standing up in parliament saying, this is completely illegitimate. The people want this. We don't have to pay attention to the parliament. This is what the people want.

47:56No definition. And this is classic populism, because the people is a very generic term. What is it? 100 % of people, 70 % of people, 52 % of people, 60 % of those who voted for the people. The second thing I think it was this sense, the Supreme Court's wrong. I'm just going to stand up as the prime minister and say, I disagree with them. Rather than what I would have expected for every previous prime minister from any party, which is to say, well, look, obviously we disagreed, but in the end, we have the rule of law. In the end, I follow what the Supreme Court says, and I'm going to apologize.

48:30What do you want me to say? Well, I want you to sort of, I mean, I suppose just to develop what begins to happen in politics when prime ministers don't say, I'm sorry, I got it wrong. The Supreme Court's ruled against me, but instead the Supreme Court is wrong, I'm doubling down, I'm on the side of the people. Well, except that he had to accept our decision because the consequence of our decision was that parliament had not been prorogued. So it met again the next day. Yeah, I was there. The prime minister did not have to do anything. And the last day of the hearing in front of us was concentrating on what the consequences would be if we held it to be unlawful.

49:06That was the most interesting part of the whole case, actually, what the consequences were. And of course, if it's unlawful, it's of no effect. And so it has a knock-on effect through the whole process. So there was no way he could actually ignore our decision. But he and Liz Truss, I suppose what I'm getting to is that instead of even paying lip service to the Supreme Court or the rule of law, they are beginning to play this game of saying, this isn't legitimate, we're legitimate. And also, I would add that the things that we've been talking about, appointment of judges, removal of judges, they play into the same thing.

49:43And this is what's happening in America. It shows how quickly, if you decide we don't really fundamentally care about the rule of law, how quickly you can slide into something very, very dark and dangerous. This is true. Do you worry that's already happened in America? And do you worry that it could happen here? I don't think that what goes on in America is necessarily a model for what goes on here. In fact, it's not easy to think of examples where we have copied America. Well, I would argue that some of what the Conservatives are doing now is probably doing that. Oh, yes. I'm on the politics now.

50:14What this country has actually done. Right. And so I'm trying to be optimistic. You understand here? I do. I do. Because the rest of our conversation would lead you to believe that I believe that what's going on in America is very, very, well, I said it was frightening, terrifying. But is it not frightening to have the main party which has been effectively governed this country more than any other now in a position where it is already taking these positions that most of your career would have been unthinkable? Well, I've already said what I think about the positions and I think that's all I should say.

50:52And just develop this one, forget about politics, I don't want to drag them to party politics, But one of the things that is striking is that none of the parties are really passionately and dramatically defending international human rights or the ECHR. And I'm sort of surprised by that, that it's not more central. Why do you think in this environment we're not seeing more leading public figures coming out in defense of these things? I think there might be two political parties that have come out fairly strongly, one of which has quite a few members of parliament. Again, it's not for me to put words into politicians' mouths, really.

51:33But have you got a sense of the culture? Well, let's move it off Britain. I mean, it's true in Europe too. I mean, we've got now the AFD in Germany talking openly about expelling hundreds of thousands of German citizens. It appears in practice predominantly Muslims. We've got similar statements coming out of Kickel in Austria. Yeah. I mean, there is an entire tendency now for development of politics, which just doesn't accept the idea, it seems to me, some basic questions about human rights, rights, international human rights. And you can see the same, I'm afraid, with a lot of these wars going on around the world of leaders essentially saying, I don't care.

52:09You know, I'm getting the job done. You can tell me that I'm breaking the law and I'm killing people. I don't care. Well, it's not only politicians who ought to be standing up to this. Civil society should be standing up to it too. I've just been in Sri Lanka. A very good example of constitutional resilience where the constitution of Sri Lanka actually got something bad, stopped, was a combination of the lawyers, the legal community, who are always a part of this and they should be standing up, some political actors, constitutional actors and civil society. and the combination of those was able to stand up to something that was a big threat to the constitution in Sri Lanka.

52:58Well, we should be thinking in those terms. We should be thinking in terms of the community as a whole, not just lawyers like me, I'm afraid, but other actors in the constitutional space. It's quite something that you even feel that we have to make that case. But I think you're right, by the way. I think we do have to make that case. Well, you're putting to me the horror stories, and I'm saying what I think I would hope would happen, that the basic decency and common sense of the great British public would say, nonsense, we are proud of ourselves for doing these things properly. We're proud of ourselves for treating people properly and humanely.

53:39And let's stand up for that. And let us remember all the good things that human rights have done for us, because they have done lots of good things. And let's remember our history. How would you assess the relative performance, if I want a better word, of the Supreme Court here and in the States? Are there comparisons you can make? Is one more or less effective than the other? Well, they're very different animals because we don't have a written constitution. So the basic principle of our constitution is that parliament can make or unmake any law. There is no court in the country which has got the power to invalidate a provision in an act of parliament.

54:19There's no court outside the country that's got the power. So parliament can do what it likes, basically. That means that the role of the Supreme Court here, the Supreme Court here has much less power than the Supreme Court in almost every other country. Almost every other civilized country in the world has a written constitution with a court, either a Supreme Court or a constitutional court, which can strike down provisions in acts of the legislature, parliament. We can't do that. So why anybody thinks we've got too much power, I simply do not understand at all. But it also means that until recently, it's been taken for granted that we're not party political at all because we don't have that power.

55:01And so all we're doing is ensuring that administration keeps within the powers that parliament has given it. Whereas the politics in America is kind of inbuilt into the system. Everybody knows the party politics of the members of the Supreme Court of the United States. Now, there have been plenty of examples in the past where people appointed by or nominated by Republican presidents have actually turned out to be the most liberal members of the court. We can all think of at least two, three, four examples of that. So you never know what's going to happen. When you swear a judicial oath and you start being a judge, things get a little bit more complicated than they might have seemed at the outset.

55:42But nevertheless, we are going to be watching with huge interest when cases challenging some of the actions of the Trump administration come before the Supreme Court, what it's going to do. And some of us might be hoping that it will, I don't want to use the word restore for obvious reasons, but it will emphasise that it really is the final check and balance and the constitutionality of what goes on over there. Is hope the same as optimism? You're hopeful. Are you optimistic? Oh, I have to be optimistic. I'm optimistic all the time. How's that been obvious? Well, let me finish on that as my final question.

56:22Looking forward, thinking about the shape of the world, the way things are going over the next, let's say, 10, 15 years, what are your hopes and fears? Well, I have the same fears that you've been putting to me. Obviously, it would be foolish to say, this is unrealistic, especially in the current state of politics here. But I have great faith and hope in the great British public, really, and in civil society more organised, and indeed, rather a lot of politicians, I'm afraid, who really do know better, and who ought to be standing up, I hope. And I have faith in the legal community as well. So I think all of those three elements that I think can show constitutional resilience do give me hope.

57:07Otherwise, what do you do at the age of 80 if you can't have hope? My final question is, I want to ask you about feminism. Rather late in the day. I'm sorry, but there we are. I want to ask you whether you think feminism and feminist campaigns have achieved their objectives, or whether you actually think that there's still an awful long way to go before you have genuine equality between the sexes. In a way, both of those things, in that certain objectives have been achieved. You know, when I was, we talked about when I was at Cambridge, you know, the sex ratio was nine young men to one young woman.

57:45There were hardly any women judges. We've now got over 40 % of judges are women. And so there are also, under law, family law is much more understanding to the different roles that people play within the family. whether it's men or women, much more understanding and dealing with that. So we've got equal pay laws. Again, we've got sex discrimination laws. So we've got all sorts of laws which are much better than they used to be. But of course, the implementation isn't necessarily perfect. I mean, there's still a lot of concern about violence against women and girls and how well that is policed.

58:24That's nothing to do with the law. I mean, obviously new horrible things get invented all the time because of the digital world we live in. But the laws are on the whole not too bad, but the implementation can be bad. Now, obviously we have evidence of misogyny and sexism in parts of the Metropolitan Police. There are obviously stories where young women have good reason not to trust the police. So that's got to be sorted. Prosecution decisions have got to be looked at carefully. We did have a director of public prosecutions who, when a complaint of rape was made, said, well, let's look to strengthen the prosecution case, not to undermine it.

59:15And that improved the situation for the prosecution of rape. Because when you take the opposite view, that the job is to undermine the case rather than to strengthen it, well, then that reduces the number of prosecutions. So there are prosecution decisions. There are obviously what goes on in courts. And I cannot say that the courts are perfect. I'm sure I wasn't perfect when I was a judge. So implementation of women's rights, women's dignity, the understanding that women are people, you know, with the same claims to dignity and equality of treatment as men. That's pretty important. So lots done, but lots to do.

59:56Yeah. Well, thank you for your time. It's been great. Well, thank you. Thank you very much. Lovely to see you. Lovely questions.

1:00:05well Rory I found her very impressive and I think she's the second oldest person that we've interviewed I'm giving Michael Heseltine a few years on her and that's not being rude about a lady's age because she was very very open about her age and actually very proud of how she kept just kept going I actually revealed my strongest impression of her apart from the fact that she's very nice and very clever and that was this incredible way she has of speaking you ask her of question whatever it's about and then she sort of formulates her thoughts and then speaks in these perfectly formed sentences and as you know one of my mottos is think in ink and i think that is a consequence of her having to write so many so many judgments over the years where you really have to use the written word to crystallize your thoughts and then verbalize them and that's what i thought she did throughout the interview in a very very succinct and interesting way i've always had a real soft spot for very senior judges because they always seem to me to be very good at listening.

1:01:02And as you say, they're not great talkers. And I guess it's because they're trained to listen. It can be true for senior journalists, actually. As people age, I tend to find politicians pretty unbearable once they're over about 50. But senior judges and journalists can actually remain quite engaged later in life. And I think it's because their professions wire their brains to have to listen very, very carefully to stuff. I also thought that she's a reminder of something that is completely unique to Britain when we talk about our national strengths, which is our judges. Famously, people from all over the world bring cases in Britain.

1:01:39Russian mobsters will literally sue each other in British courts because they trust that our judges are completely uncorruptible and that they will accept literally these incredible cases. Do you remember Roman Abramovich going after Berezovsky. I mean, these were cases where Russian members of basically on the edge of organized crime were making very explicit in British courts, mafia codes, and whether or not the other person had complied with the regulations for mafia code, all heard in sort of solemn silence by these British judges. And I think Lady Hale is a sort of credible example of that, because she's a side of Britain that we don't talk about very much, and maybe gets a bit lost in a Britain which is much more celebrity social media ideological.

1:02:30I mean, her story, child of two headteachers, head girl at her school, both her sisters, head girl at her school, one of only, I think, seven out of 170 students at law at Cambridge, starred Double First from Girton. And when you ask her about what she's done naughty in her life, she says, I haven't done anything naughty. I was a very good girl. I worked very hard. Yes. She's also, what you've just said, though, is really important because if you tie together some of the things that we talked about, they are all actually related to trends that exist, either exist within the United States system, where the politicians are in charge of who sits in the courts, and particularly in their case in the Supreme Court, which, you know, is now almost rules according to political bias in some cases, or are being exacerbated by the current United States system, including, for example, by the fact that you have so much sort of, you know, Judge Judy as a sort of, you know, never-ending TV perennial, where literally law becomes part of a kind of entertainment complex.

1:03:39And that's why I thought it was very interesting we did the interview in the build-up to the conservative party conference when robert jenrich was gearing up to talk about you know taking politicians should be appointing the judges rather than an independent system etc she was clearly very alarmed by that and equally alarmed by what i think by what even though she was very diplomatic equally alarmed by what she saw during the prorogation issue where she felt that again was the law being taken for granted the rule of law being taken for granted. So if you imagine that in politics and cultural issues, we are sometimes just a few years behind the United States, then I think it's right that she raises the alarm about that.

1:04:18I'd love it if she actually, she's got a book out, as she reminded us, I'd love it if she went on a book promoting speaking tour in the United States. I think she'd become a bit of a sensation. She's wonderful, isn't she? And I think the final thing I thought is that as our constitution comes more and more under strain, and I think you're right to suspect that certainly with Farage and the direction the Tory party's going, when they're beginning to talk about suspending international human rights treaties and doing these very fundamental changes to our constitution, we will need guardians of our constitution.

1:04:52We'll need people who are prepared to stand up and say, actually, that isn't constitutional. And our system is dependent on, very dependent on judges. It's also actually interestingly dependent on our king to try to keep this whole constitutional show on the road as it comes under strain. And we really need judges of that quality. What I loved about her is that there wasn't any side to her. She wasn't really showing off there wasn't much vanity it was a pretty straight and and i i you desperately need that to be reassuring although i must say my final thought given the fact that my sense is this is a woman of incredible uh really impressive intellect integrity very very straightforward it's true that when she did that ruling about the prerogation of parliament she was attacked by Johnson and the Attorney General and others, trying to make her out as though she was politically motivated.

1:05:51So even with the very best, purest of the judges, they're going to find it very difficult defending the Constitution. Yeah. And also the kind of decades of sort of fuddy-duddy, out-of-touch judges, you know, on all the sort of headlines that go on that. The truth is, if we don't have a system in which we can trust whatever their views, And as she said, she didn't necessarily know their views, all the judges, the other judges, but she could kind of, you know, she could sometimes guess. But unless you can have judges that literally do their job, which is to ensure that the law is being properly applied, then the rule of law does break down.

1:06:27And if you've got political pressures for it so to do, then that becomes a real and present danger. I think people really enjoy that interview. I hope they do. And we should maybe think about somebody else who's even older. And we could maybe do another judge. Maybe we could do your friend John Sumption at some point or something. My friend? You mean my lawyer? You're making the mistake here. You're politicizing the legal system. He was my lawyer. He was my lawyer. He was representing me. Anyway, good luck and we'll see you soon. See you soon. Thank you, Alistair.

1:07:08For all the entrepreneurs and business owners out there, if you're ready to simplify your business finances and exchange like an expert, now's the time to open a Revolut business account. Plus, you'll unlock a£200 welcome bonus or the equivalent in your local currency if you sign up and add money to your account by the end of 2025. Just use the link in the description. Fees and terms and conditions apply. Alastair Campbell here. Now, we've just released a series on one of the most controversial and consequential people of the past 50 years, Rupert Murdoch. I think you can argue that he is the most consequential figure of the second half of the 20th century.

1:07:47He holds power longer than anyone else in our time. And it's meaningful power. It's phenomenal power. Power without responsibility, the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages. This is where he becomes not just a newspaper owner, he becomes a major newsmaker. Fuck Dacre, publish. There is always a premium on bringing him gossip. I don't know what you mean by downmarket and upmarket. That is so English class-ridden snobbery when you talk like that. How you get it doesn't make any difference. Actually, to be perfectly honest, whether it's true or not doesn't make much difference. There is a massive, massive scandal brewing.

1:08:28This was industrial, illegal activity. And that, I think, is what really cuts through to the public and thinks you people are really, really bad. I would just like to say one sentence. This is the most humble day of my life. There is no Donald Trump without Fox News. His dream was always to elect a president of the United States. The bitter irony is that that turned out to be Donald Trump. On the end, he detests. He is conquering the world. There's nothing less than this methodical step-by-step progress to take over everything. To hear more, sign up at therestispolitics.com. Hi, it's David from The Rest is Classified here with a very special message for listeners of The Rest is Politics.

1:09:16we've just released a two-part series on the pager attacks that were carried out by Israel's foreign intelligence service, Mossad, against Hezbollah in the aftermath of October 7th. Now, for a political and military organization like Hezbollah, command and control is absolutely everything. And the Israelis had tried to destroy the group and ultimately failed. But in the low level conflict that the two sides were engaged in post-October 7th, Israel was facing the prospect of a two-front war, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu decided to take critical action. As Hezbollah grew increasingly paranoid, they turned to the pager as a secure alternative, but what they bought instead was a lethal Mossad plot.

1:09:57Within days, Hezbollah's command was wiped out when the Israelis assassinated its leader, Hassan Nasrallah. To hear the full episode, you can listen to The Rest is Classified wherever you get your podcasts as we break down this incredible geopolitical gamble, and all the spycraft behind the explosive attacks that permanently shifted the balance of power in the Middle East.