The Curmudgeon

YOU'LL COME FOR THE CURSES. YOU'LL STAY FOR THE MUDGEONRY.

Thursday, March 08, 2007

Legal Beagle

Lawyer, n. One skilled in circumvention of the law.
Legislator, n. A person who goes to the capital of his country to increase his own; one who makes laws and money.
Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary


The Vicar of Downing Street's counsellor on matters of earthly law, Lord Goldsmith, has possibly the finest legal mind in the country; or, then again, possibly not. His granite flexibility over the Iraq war has led certain uncharitable persons to question his independence from Tony's Government, in spite of his having been appointed by Tony to Tony's very own cabinet. Thanks to Tony, Goldsmith's flip-flop over the legality of the Iraq adventure was all forgiven and forgotten when it turned out that the war wasn't about weapons of mass destruction at all, but about getting rid of Saddam, because getting rid of Saddam was the Right Thing to Do; but further problems have since arisen. Goldsmith's intervention to prevent a corruption investigation of the arms company BAE Systems was justified on the grounds that "the wider public interest", in the face of an unspecified threat to the country's security, "outweighed the need to maintain the rule of law". Although Goldsmith explicitly stated that "no weight has been given to commercial interests or to the national economic interest", certain evil-minded elements were led to question his independence from Tony's government, in spite of the statement having been drafted in "consultation" with, among others, Tony himself.

Fortunately, Goldsmith has now done another flip-flop and decided that his "primary duty is to the law, never to political parties", and that his attempts to prevent reporting of certain matters concerning the Vicar of Downing Street's privatisation of the honours trade were motivated solely by the "risk to the administration of justice" and not by the wider public interest at all. This is certainly reassuring, since Lord Goldsmith was appointed by Tony to Tony's very own cabinet and has possibly the finest legal mind in the country.

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