A Small Indiscretion

The Binyam Mohamed torture case has taken an unpredictable turn, at least for those privileged souls who have been in a coma since 1997. It transpires that the Government's counsel, Jonathan Sumption QC, who once implied that people who objected to the Government's complicity in torture were motivated more by political considerations than by concern for human rights, tried to suppress a paragraph in the appeal court's judgement on the grounds that it would cause a political upset. The original judgement stated that MI5 did not respect human rights, did not renounce the more genitally reformative levels of interrogative assertiveness, and operated a "culture of suppression" to such a degree that nothing it said could be considered reliable. Sumption, despite being a lawyer in the pay of New New Labour, abused the drafting process by deceiving the master of the rolls, Lord Neuberger, into believing that the Government's draft had been agreed by all parties.

So it appears that we now have the explanation both for the Upper Miliband's initial hearty welcome of the court of appeal's verdict and for the Upper Miliband's posturing yesterday as a bigger and better death-bed democrat than the man he hopes will shortly be his respected and admired predecessor as Leader of the Opposition. The second was a bit of preliminary spadework to bury some bad news; the first was a squeak of joy at the smooth and merciful workings of the British legal system. Unfortunately, that was before the master of the rolls committed the indiscretion of letting slip what Sumption had been up to. Lawyers can be an awkward lot, especially when they start worrying about staying within the law.