One of the revolutions which set this country off on its spectacular rise to power was the invention of the legal concept of equity. The rigid decisions thrown out by common law could be mitigated to suit the individual merits of the case. It was a departure from a strict code of legal black-and-white. A party which had brought a successful action in bad faith could be penalised, a party which had done wrong but with good intention could be let off with a slapped wrist. A sense of fair play entered the court system.
Since the post war socialist revolution started, our system has been moving back towards a more continental style of coded law. The criminal law started to be codified, flexibility and discretion was slowly bled out. Parliament rushed to create more and more absolute offences. Instead of over-arching prohibitions such as “theft” or “assault” where the severity could be assessed by judges or a jury we have a system which tries to predict every possible permutation of wrong-doing and attach a moral judgement and legal penalty. This trend has culminated in New Labour’s creation of ridiculous criminal offences such as “obstructing workers carrying out repairs to the Docklands Light Railway”.
The same old problem that we thought we had solved in the thirteenth century has reared its ugly head in the twenty-first. Our procedures and processes are so strict and convoluted that they throw up totally irrational results. The poster boy for this malaise is Met Commander Ali Dizaei. Here is a man who everybody knew in their bones to be the wrong person for the job, and yet the system would not allow his employer to get rid of him. Here is a man who was allowed to flout the rules to his heart’s content knowing that if he was ever challenged he would cry “racism”. Here is a culture which is so process driven that it cannot yield to common sense. Dizaei will still technically be an employee of the taxpayer until the employment tribunal has its say, even though he will be in prison. Dizaei is not the cause of the problem, he is a three-dimensional shining beacon of a symptom.
Britain, thanks to the left-wing lawyers and their cheerleaders and due to the unwillingness of others to resist the change, has become a machine. Procedure and policy are paramount, outcome irrelevant. Nobody can be blamed as long as they followed the instructions. Employers cannot fire unsuitable people; individuals are not allowed to take responsibility for their decisions; you will go through this menu system before we will allow you to speak to a person.
But might there be light at the end of the tunnel? Dizaei’s situation is surely so egregious that people must sit up and ask: how was this allowed to happen? How was it that he was allowed to ponce about so inappropriately doing things which other officers would have been chucked out long-since for doing? How was it that the Black Police Association was still accusing prosecutors of racism right up to the end? How did the Met allow him to be so continuously promoted when he was clearly so unsuitable to hold even the lowliest of public offices?
Is this now the time to put the equity back into the system? Can we have a system where procedural purity is not sacrosanct when there is an obvious injustice going on? Can’t we be a bit more pragmatic? Can we escape the ridiculous machinations? I think we can. I think we should. But do we have the leaders who are prepared to risk the high-pitched uproar of the New Establishment?











