The United Kingdom is facing a huge backlog of criminal cases in its courts, and David Lammy, the Justice Secretary, has found a solution: eliminate jury trials for any crime that carries a sentence of five years or fewer.
Which, it turns out, is pretty much every case except for murder, rape, and manslaughter. (Of course, in the UK, it sometimes seems like even those cases are considered misdemeanors if the crime was committed by a migrant.)
The reasoning? Simple, trials take a lot of time and effort if ordinary citizens are involved, so if we leave everything up to a judge, it is much more efficient.
David Lammy is proposing that jury trials be scrapped for all cases not involving rapists or killers.
— David Davis MP (@DavidDavisMP) November 25, 2025
This is a disgrace. It is an even bigger disgrace that he has not discussed this with Parliament.https://t.co/YchVTj8DQP
Ah, efficiency, is there anything it cannot justify? Especially when everybody in the UK establishment is quite certain that the ordinary Briton is an uncooperative dolt who seems to believe that they should have a say in how their country is run.
David Lammy is set to scrap jury trials for most crimes despite previously arguing that they are fundamental to democracy.
In leaked documents, seen by The Telegraph, the Justice Secretary has proposed juries will only decide upon cases of murder, rape, manslaughter and other serious offences carrying sentences of more than five years.
The plans come as courts across Britain battle a record backlog of nearly 80,000 cases, with many victims of crime waiting years for justice. The documents warn that failure to ease the gridlock could lead to a “wider collapse” of the criminal justice system.
Mr Lammy set out the plans despite previously defending jury trials when they were under threat during the Covid pandemic, saying “jury trials are a fundamental part of our democratic settlement”.
Under the reforms, which require legislation next year, judges will preside alone over trials of other serious offences meriting prison sentences of up to five years, thus removing the right of thousands of defendants to be heard before a jury.
The right to a trial by a jury of one's peers was an innovation at the time it was enshrined in the Magna Carta, but as the Just Stop Oil protesters demonstrated, the Magna Carta is just a piece of parchment, right?
Just Stop Oil protestors try to break the glass of the Magna Cartapic.twitter.com/68EaOeJS03
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) May 10, 2024
Trial by jury was not invented by the British, of course. Ancient Athens famously used the system, although the tradition of a jury of 12 citizens (most of the time) that developed in England settled in the Anglosphere.
Juries have been the last line of defence against the authoritarian cancel mob.
— The Free Speech Union (@SpeechUnion) November 25, 2025
When our members have found themselves charged with criminal offences for speaking out, juries have reliably said no dice to overzealous prosecutors. This has infuriated the CPS and the activists… pic.twitter.com/0dSkqBBcrY
Juries have been the last line of defence against the authoritarian cancel mob.
When our members have found themselves charged with criminal offences for speaking out, juries have reliably said no dice to overzealous prosecutors. This has infuriated the CPS and the activists who make malicious complaints.
One was Jamie Michael, a decorated Royal Marines veteran, who was charged with inciting racial hatred after a Labour staffer reported him to the police for a video he posted on Facebook. Jamie spent 20 days in prison on remand. A jury took just 17 minutes to clear him. The local Labour Party were said to be furious.
Now David Lammy wants to scrap juries and give judges — who are required to follow DEI policies — the sole power to convict and jail Brits for up to 5 years for online posts.
This move is about power, not saving costs. Nothing in our present national situation warrants abandoning an 800-year-old right: that in a court of law, your peers decide if you're guilty, not the state.
We will fight any such proposal with everything we’ve got.
Lammy is now arguing that citizens have no right to be judged by a jury of their peers, which is quite the turnaround from the position he took during the COVID era, when he called it a fundamental right.
The plans go much further than recommendations by Sir Brian Leveson, a former High Court judge, in a report commissioned by Shabana Mahmood, Mr Lammy’s predecessor.
Sir Brian had proposed an intermediate court of a judge and two magistrates to hear cases of defendants facing up to three years in jail.
But the leaked document said Mr Lammy aimed “to achieve maximum impact” by going further. It said there was “no right to a jury trial”, even though it was enshrined in Magna Carta that “no free man shall be seized or imprisoned except by the lawful judgment of his equals”.
Five years ago Mr Lammy defended the right to a trial by jury. Writing for The Telegraph in 2020, he said jury service ensured “fairness and representation in the criminal justice system” and formed “part of the bedrock of our democracy”.
Lammy, at the time, was passionate in his defense of jury trials, but it turns out that, as in most cases when a politician gets on his high horse, all those fine words wee nothing more than a partisan attack on the Tory government at the time.
Dispensing with jury trials in the Covid era will damage our democracy
David Lammy, writing for the Telegraph in June 2020
“The right of an individual to be punished only as a result of “the lawful judgment of his equals” was enshrined in Magna Carta of 1215. Yes, this right only extended to a certain group of men, but it laid the foundation of a principle which is now fundamental to the justice system of England and Wales. A recent attorney general, Dominic Grieve, described it as “deeply ingrained in our national DNA”. He was right, and the Government is at risk of forgetting this.
A jury trial gives people the final say on the guilt or innocence of their fellow citizens. It entrusts the public to make life-changing decisions, rather than merely leaving it in the hands of lawyers. This is a civic duty – developed over centuries – which ensures fairness and representation in the criminal justice system and forms part of the bedrock of our democracy...”
Before I get too far in jumping on my high horse about how this move is further proof that Great Britain is devolving into a totalitarian state—it is, of course—I should note that the practice of processing most cases in the United States by the sleight of hand of pressuring defendants into plea bargains serves much the same purpose. Few cases go to trial here, too.
Only about 2% to 3% of cases ever make it to trial, which I consider an abomination. It's not that plea bargains are inherently unjust; they actually save many a defendant from the justice they richly deserve, in the name of efficiency. But that is the point, really—we have been moving away from a flawed system that mostly serves the community well by allowing it to exercise its sense of justice to one where judges and prosecutors serve as bureaucrats processing paperwork.
Look at how that is working out for us. Career criminals walk through revolving doors all the time.
Reform, in other words, is necessary in the Anglosphere, and to my eyes, we are going in the wrong direction. What we need are more judges and judicial infrastructure, and much harsher sentences for many criminals.
Our judicial systems were designed for a much smaller population and haven't expanded to keep up with the massive population growth over the past few decades. When I was born, the US population was under 200 million. Today, it is closing in on 350 million. Much of that is due to mass migration, which itself has been driven in many cases by ignoring immigration laws.
The number of courts has not increased at anything like the rate at which cases have in that time period, despite a 1400% increase in caseload. So we cheat.
It's dispiriting. When I was younger, and civics classes were a thing still, rather than social justice nonsense being the main content shoved at kids, I was taught that trial by jury was the bedrock of our justice system.
Now, it is built on quicksand. It is highly bureaucratized and run by people who, in many cases, would rather let repeat offenders go until they light someone on fire.
Rights, it turns out, are seen as mere suggestions made by naive idealists who believed that government exists primarily to protect the lives and liberties of citizens.
Because technocrats know better, don't they?
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