Shadow justice secretary says despite U-turn Labour are still ‘restricting juries by the back door’, as Conservative conference begins in Birmingham
Good morning.Anthony Seldon recently published the latest in his long and invaluable series of inside stories of premierships, Sunak at 10 , and he gave it the subtitle “The last Conservative prime minister?” When the book was being planned in the early days of Kemi Badenoch’s leadership of the Conservative party, it did look as though the Tories might be finished as a party of government. But now Seldon, and his co-authorTom Egerton , aren’t so sure. Their book concludes: “At the time of writing in July 2026 … the Tory party still needs to engage in a process of deep self-reflection to understand why it failed in government, and tore itself so destructively apart, if it is ever to regain power. But at this point in time we believe it is unlikely that Sunak will have been the last Tory prime minister.” That is a victory, of sorts, for Badenoch. For most of last year there were doubts that she would still be leader by the time of the next election. But she gave a successful party conference speech, her response to the budget was much admired, and her personal approval ratings with Tory members and right-leaning voters shot up. After two years as opposition leader, Iain Duncan Smith was booted out. Two years in, Badenoch’s position as leader is safe and it is even conceivable that she could stay on if the Conservatives were to lose the next election (in part because any Tories who favour a radically different policy approach are being purged from the candidates list ). This is a major victory for everyone who fought to defend trial by jury, and Conservatives led that fight from day one. Labour has been forced to abandon its central attack on jury trials in the crown court. Labour are restricting juries by the back door, scrapping the right to elect one and dumping those cases on magistrates whose backlog is at a record high. Nearly 81, 000 cases are stuck in the crown court, yet there is no commitment to get courts sitting more often, but Labour did find the time to write into law a review of how its reforms treat people of different backgrounds. Continue reading...