Wigs at Dawn

It’s good to be provocative. But to describe Jenrick being a lawyer as his secret weapon because it makes them good leaders and the country loves lawyers is not so much provocative as …. well, let’s see, shall we.
- Clement Attlee: he stopped his legal work in 1908, concentrating on political and social work. He became Labour leader in 1935 and PM ten years later. His period as deputy PM during WW2 was certainly a better preparation for this than his legal qualifications
- Mrs Thatcher: she qualified as a barrister but barely practised as one. She had a long apprenticeship in politics before becoming Tory party leader then PM. Her experience as a lay preacher was at least as helpful as her legal training.
- Tony Blair: he practised as a barrister for ca 5 years. This is a nanosecond in legal years. How far it made him an effective political communicator is questionable. It probably helped but the talent was already there. Certainly the law did not teach him to make speeches. With short sentences. Cliche-ridden. Without verbs. (Or much substance.)
- As for Cameron, his main value to DLA Piper will be to give them and their clients frequent talks about how not to fall for a fraudulent huckster like Lex Greensill and how to spot obvious red flags, unless blinded by stupidity or the promise of great riches. If he is, as reported, backing Jenrick, it shows he has learnt nothing. Mind you his “I’ll scratch your back, you scratch mine” contribution to politics has been copied, though rather more pathetically, with Starmer’s acceptance of suits, glasses and lingerie from a party donor. At least Cameron was greedy for money, lots of it.
As for Jenrick, he may be a sh*t (© @DavidL) but he’s also a dreadful lawyer, as shown by his dealings with Richard Desmond in 2021 (pointed out by me here). About the only good thing to be said for him is that he opened his house to a Ukrainian refugee family when Russia invaded.
What all three of Attlee, Thatcher and Blair had in common is that they had a clear idea of what they wanted for the country, a rough plan for how to achieve it, were able to articulate this and persuade their MPs and voters to believe in this and follow them, even in the face of what seemed impossible difficulties and against strong opposition.
Starmer has had a long career as a lawyer, mostly in the human rights field(*). He is inexperienced as a politician (an MP in 2015 and Opposition leader in 2020) and it shows. As opposition leader he was mainly sorting out the mess Corbyn left behind. His political judgment is not great: Anneliese Dodds as his first Shadow Chancellor. Really?
He has not yet been able to do what Attlee, Thatcher and Blair were able to do. More than the ability to communicate their ideas, they understood the need to do so, to explain and persuade. It is not clear what Starmer really believes in or wants. (He may know but, if so, it feels like a well-kept secret.) He seems most animated by Assisted Dying (one of only 7 Parliamentary votes he has attended as PM) – grimly appropriate as his premiership endures a slow lingering decline. Admitting that he did not read, understand or like a speech he gave is a dreadful mistake to admit to as a rookie lawyer let alone an experienced one. As PM (especially on a key policy area designed to undercut Reform) it makes him look ridiculous, however much sympathy one might have for his personal circumstances at the time.
It is no surprise to me that he has been most effective when doing the sort of work in the sort of way that a KC does when preparing a court case. This was shown to best advantage when visiting Trump: lots of behind the scenes work by the Foreign Office and British Embassy, time to prepare and practise and a presentation carefully judged to appeal to and flatter an idiosyncratic “judge“. But ordinary politics is not like that. “Forensic” is over-used when dealing with lawyers-turned-politicians. (It was often said of Michael Howard and a fat lot of good it did him or his party.) It is a compliment when used within the very particular rules of the legal game. Everywhere else it makes someone sound like an overly pedantic bore with a tin ear for how they sound to non-lawyers (see his petulant defence that accepting freebies was “within the rules” which missed exactly why people were annoyed. Like too many lawyers and politicians, he forgot that the key question is not whether something can be done but whether it should be). And as the Post Office Inquiry should have taught us by now, the legal profession’s dirty little secret is that an awful lot of lawyers – even in well known firms and at the Bar – are really quite second and third-rate.
Starmer’s real difficulty is that he is having to learn how to be an effective leader while doing the job under relentless scrutiny, in the face of difficult political and social conditions and with a Parliamentary party largely consisting of MPs even more inexperienced than he is. It’s not clear who could do better.
Back to Jenrick: if he wants to be leader, it’s not his legal expertise he needs to emphasise but his willingness to be utterly shameless in how he attacks the government and in the nonsense he is willing to say. Most people assume this is what lawyers do anyway. It will likely make him leader and we can then watch yet another over-promoted leader (and lawyer) make a mess of the role. Choosing an integrity-free leader is not the way to rebuild trust in our political and other institutions. It is that breakdown of trust which is at the heart of many of the country’s problems. One day one of our political parties might get this and even try to do something about it. Until then, we’ll find ourselves watching every Tory MP becoming leader as there will soon only be about 7 of them left. And by then Starmer might have improved.
All together now: Things can only get better ……
Cyclefree
(*) The book to which he contributed: “Criminal Justice, Police Powers And Human Rights” (Blackstone’s Human Rights Series) – available on Amazon – is actually quite good.