Pannick in Downing Street as Boris faces contempt charge
Blow me down with a feather. Boris Johnson and Lord Pannick QC have teamed up in a way, and at a time, that I didn’t see coming. Perhaps no one did! It would be more than I could bear not to weigh in on the subject of this unexpected coupling. I don’t think you should blame me for doing so. I hope that some of you might even welcome it.
In my previous offering on these pages, I concluded with an example of two judges seeking to assert – quite unconvincingly, I suggested – that their decision in a case was simply the result of legislation enacted by Parliament. The judgment was, I thought, a rather convoluted legal analysis arriving at a result that few, if any, MPs would have contemplated or intended. My attention has since turned to another example of a senior lawyer trying to suggest that responsibility for his own reasoning lies with others.
Saturday 12 September 2009
I’ve had a difficult 24 hours. Booked a flight to the US (where I am now). Figured I needed to leave on Friday (yesterday) in order to meet the schedule that brings me to the US. It wasn’t until I had to give someone my travel dates that I realised I’d picked September 11th to fly on American Airlines! On the upside, the plane was practically empty, even if everyone looked a little jumpy.
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