Kitten Heels and Hush Puppies....

Theresa May’s pussy really got Ken Clarke’s blood up today at the Tory party conference in Manchester.

"Sure I'll get you asylum, but
what's in it for me and Officer Dibble?" 

Once the Home Secretary let said feline out of her elegantly tooled hold-all as some kind of ham-fisted play to the cheap seats, she should have been on notice that her speech had raised the hackles of a big cantankerous beast. 


Tales of scrounging illegal freeloaders being given leave to stay in the good old gullible UK on the improbable basis that cat ownership had somehow conferred upon them human rights (or something), were rightly derided by Clarke. Whatever the prosaic truth of Maya the cat (if indeed that is its real name) and its persuasive mitigation on its owner's behalf; its personification by May as a repository of human rights ridicule did little to advance the debate in any enlightened way. 

And to be fair to old Hush Puppies, he gave one of the most eloquent defences of the Human Rights Act and the Strasbourg Convention that gives it its provenance that one is ever likely to hear at a Conservative Conference (it probably wouldn’t even have sounded too outré coming from the hustings at the Lib-Dem or Labour conferences either for that matter).

And that’s perhaps why you have Clarke front and centre at the conference; he’ll turn in the kind of performance that reminds one why he was a force to be reckoned with and why he probably still is; even if these days, he is more likely to be described as “the sixth Liberal Cabinet minister”. 

All good  show-boating stuff for the Conference faithful. May and her vapid tabloid generalisations might play well to innate prejudice but these days, even Tories are rather less comfortable about being caught laughing at stereotypes, at least on camera.

So while Clarke’s gallant and eloquent defence of the Human Rights Act was ultimately just a piece of good old-fashioned speechifying in defence of a grand cause (we have so few these days) and tempered with a bit political side-swiping, the lofty principles evaporate on closer scrutiny. Clarke’s fondness for civil liberty as a rhetorical stage prop is rather at odds with his scorched earth approach to legal aid funding.

Mee-ow?

Since Clarke announced £350m of cuts to the £2.1bn Legal Aid budget for England and Wales on 21 June this year, the former barrister has faced persistent allegations of ignoring the concerns of practitioners and civil liberties campaigners alike.

Peter Lodder QC, chairman of the Bar Council which represents barristers, told The Guardian at the time: "The government has failed to listen to the views expressed by many in the judiciary, the legal profession and voluntary organisations in formulating its proposals on legal aid. Legal aid will be withdrawn from whole swaths of areas of law and access to justice will be systematically deprived."

Even a body as conservative as The Law Society recognises the right to legal representation as a “fundamental principle of a civilised society and is a cornerstone of our way of life”. In response to Clarke's Conference address today, Law Society chief executive Desmond Hudson tried a slightly more conciliatory tone: “We agree with Ken Clarke that there is scope for savings in the justice budget and that excessive expenditure should be tackled but the cuts he is proposing to legal aid are a mistake and will we fear cost more in the long run than they will save.”


Any working solicitors we spoke to however were rather less conciliatory and were apt to wonder whether the helpful Mr Hudson would be leading from the front and taking a pay-cut; seeing as he's so happy to volunteer his straitened membership for further savings in the justice budget and all. 

Clarke: England and Wales has 

“much the most expensive legal aid system in the world"

Hudson does make at least one fair point and that refrain of 'it’ll cost more in the long run' has been coming consistently from all quarters of the legal system. Director of Legal Action Group (LAG) Steve Hynes, thought Clarke’s proposals were "penny wise, but pound foolish". He told The Guardian (again on 21 June): "The bulk of them fall on the sort of face-to-face advice services which can deal with legal problems before they spiral out of control into costly court cases. The proposed cuts will mainly hit ordinary members of the public seeking help with common civil legal problems."

The last word goes to Shami Chakrabarti, the director of Liberty whose comments in response to Clarke's announcement in June remain pertinent: "Is it right that only criminal defendants and professional footballers should get legal advice? Politicians wag their fingers at 'fat cat lawyers' but today's slap in the face goes to ordinary families, children and the disabled."