Criticising m’learned friends has been a risky undertaking since a certain newspaper described a few beaks as ‘enemies of the people’ during the kerfuffle about Europe a few years back. In the age of populism, you are either a defender of the rule of law or an incipient fascist accusing an honest judge of being an ‘ex-Olympic fencer’.

It is therefore with some trepidation that I’d like to suggest the government’s plans to restrict jury trials might not in fact signal the end of democracy. An absence of 12 angry men (or indeed women) at the trial of Burglar Bill probably won’t ‘break the increasingly thin connection between the state and ordinary people’, leading to rising ‘fears of tyrannical governments’, as has been claimed by Riel Karmy-Jones KC, chair of the Criminal Bar Association.

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