Retreating Ragbag Ducks Separation

A minority report from a parliamentary committee reviewing the role of the attorney general has accused the Minister of Incarceration and Deportation of a "ragbag of retreats". Imagine that.

The committee was set up in part because of Lord Goldsmith's performance as New Labour apparatchik, attorney general and chum of Tony, not necessarily in that order. Goldsmith it was who memorably decided that Operation Iraqi Liberation would probably be illegal unless Tony thought otherwise, and that the Serious Fraud Office would do better not to investigate any cases which might cause the House of Saud to stop sharing its values with us. A few malcontents have used these matters as a pretext to call for the attorney general's role to be "depoliticised"; in other words, that New New Labour should kowtow to Parliament and the public even when New New Labour knows it is right.

Perish the thought. The majority of the committee concluded that the malcontents are wrong, and that the attorney general should retain "the nuclear option" of telling the Prime Minister whatever he wishes to hear, particularly in matters of national security, viz. just about every matter on which the Government is determined to get its own way. After all, one never knows when Parliament might decide to misuse its authority and release some terrorist suspect after only forty-one days' internment.

The minority concluded that the Glorious Successor's "ambition to reinvigorate our democracy", such as it is given his less than spectacular mandate, "will never be realised by the ragbag of retreats embodied in his constitutional renewal bill." The bill "will fail to rekindle public confidence in the sullied office of attorney general since it ducks the opportunity to separate [the] legal and political functions." Imagine that.