The trouble with Grieve: Cameron may regret leaving the law to a lawyer

Wednesday, 11th November 2009

James Forsyth reviews the week in Politics

After a good meal, Tory MPs like to play a game: guess the first resignation from David Cameron’s Cabinet. For a party that loves plots and intrigue, this goes some way to making up for the fact that everyone will be on their best behaviour between now and the election. When it comes to who might walk on a point of principle, one name comes up more frequently than any other: Dominic Grieve, the shadow justice secretary.

This is, perhaps, appropriate given that Grieve was thrust into the limelight by David Davis’s self-immolation over 42 days. Straight after Davis resigned as shadow home secretary, Cameron and Osborne desperately wanted to prevent the possibility of a split over the issue and so having a friend of Davis who shared his trenchant opposition to 42 days fill the gap seemed sensible, especially as Grieve is a strong Commons performer who is popular with his colleagues.

But it was a case of act in haste, repent at leisure. Within days senior figures in the party were saying that they couldn’t envisage going into the election with Grieve as shadow home secretary: not surprising given that even before his elevation key members of the Cameron team were unconvinced by him. When a presentation on how to win more ethnic minority votes for the party included the line ‘We need more MPs like Dominic Grieve’, Steve Hilton, the keeper of the Cameron brand, could barely suppress a laugh.

Certainly, Grieve was not a typical shadow home secretary. He is a cerebral QC who speaks fluent French and he had little time for the tub-thumping approach to the job so beloved of some politicians. This caused problems. At one lunch with the then editor of the Sun Rebekah Wade, Grieve criticised the way that the paper covered crime. Wade reportedly told Andy Coulson that as long as Grieve remained in that post, the paper could not endorse the Conservatives. So, in January’s ‘pub-ready’ reshuffle, Grieve was replaced by Chris Grayling, one of the more politically aggressive members of the shadow Cabinet.

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denis cooper

November 12th, 2009 1:21pm Report this comment

Yes, well as I understand it was Dominic Grieve who advised that Bill Cash's New Clause 9 would "create a constitutional contradiction", and therefore Tory MPs should not vote for it.

To sum up what happened, Declaration 17 attached to the Lisbon Treaty asserts the inherent superiority of EU treaties and laws over national laws, a doctrine invented by lawyers at the EU's Court of Justice, and so to affirm and protect the legal supremacy of our Parliament Bill Cash tabled an amendment to the Bill to implement the treaty, which read as follows:

"New Clause 9

Supremacy of Parliament

‘Notwithstanding any provision of the European Communities Act 1972, nothing in this Act shall affect or be construed by any court in the United Kingdom as affecting the supremacy of the United Kingdom Parliament.’.— [Mr. Cash.]"

So according to Grieve a precautionary amendment to affirm and protect the supremacy of our national Parliament would "create a constitutional contradiction", a view which is only comprehensible if it has come from somebody who has abandoned his own commitment to that supremacy, notwithstanding the Oath of Allegiance which he swore prior to taking his seat in the Commons.

Unfortunately he is not alone in this: when the Cash amendment was put to a vote, Division 120 on March 5th 2008, here:

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200708/cmhansrd/cm080305/debtext/80305-0024.htm

it was defeated 380 - 48.

Robert Slack

November 12th, 2009 1:37pm Report this comment

The fact he is half French may explain more than his fluency in the language.

Haldane

November 15th, 2009 8:11pm Report this comment

If there is a problem, and I'm not sure that there is, it would be that he is too good a mam for our political landscape, both intellectually and morally. There is also the danger that your man Forsyth has become so inured to ways of the Westminster Village that he takes the judgments of the politicos to whom he gossips as the best and most authentic arbiters as to how politics is now seen by the electorate. Some clue to this is given by the casual manner in which he reveals, without evident shock or horror, how a tabloid editor can have (shadow) cabinet ministers removed for disagreeing with her.

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