Lammy's jury lay-offs aren't swift justice, they're a sellout

Sources close to David Lammy deny that he was engaged in what Rachel Reeves called “scene-setting”: namely, allowing people to believe that he was going to do something terrible, so that when he did something that was only bad, everyone would be mightily relieved.

- JOHN RENTOUL

That got the chancellor into a whole pile of trouble. Instead of managing expectations, she made things worse for herself and an opinion poll yesterday confirmed that most people thought she had not been “honest” in the way she presented the state of economy in the run-up to the Budget.

Last week, it was reported that the justice secretary planned to abolish almost all jury trials, except for charges of rape, manslaughter and murder. The suspicion was that when he came before the Commons yesterday to announce a less dramatic restriction in the right to trial by jury, he hoped that MPs would unite in approval of a more modest reform.

His people insist that they did not leak the maximum restriction plan, which was one of a range of options.

But when Lammy made his statement, he presented himself as the Great Blairite Reformer, pursuing a third way between extreme action and inaction. He had a good line, which sounded like authentic New Labour, about coming to parliament not to scrap jury trials but to save them.