That’s the headline on page nine of The Times yesterday. Here’s the story.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton, where’s that? It’s a village in Nottinghamshire, smallish: population 112. Lord Falconer himself became largish ballooning to more than sixteen stone on a regime to be envied by even such a gourmand as Sir Gregory Parsloe-Parsloe: lots of booze, legal lunches and dinners with a few in-betweens. His remuneration swelled commensurately: estimated at, give or take a million, £2.5 million. Nice work if you can get it.
Now he eschews breakfast, elevenses, lunch, tea and alcohol. He snacks on apples until he tucks into a healthy supper. Obviously he’s gone a bit bonkers, who wouldn’t on that diet, otherwise he wouldn’t have allowed The Mail on Sunday to get hold of an excerpt from a webinar: “how the law has been changed by Covid”. He chose his words carefully for his audience of lawyers but drew opprobrium from the wider public. “This (Covid) is a gift that keeps on giving; the law keeps on changing …”
No doubt you see me sipping a glass of sloe gin (I am) gloating over Charlie’s discomfiture. Of course he’s way out of order, not least because he is shadow Attorney General and his insensitivity will not go down well with voters the Labour Party wants to get back. But I see his point – fast forward to page 45 of The Times yesterday.
Five Law Lords (leaping), nine firms of solicitors (salivating) and thirty-one barristers (who misspelt their applications to work at Starbucks). It’s like a legal Twelve Days of Christmas. Of course Covid is a gold mine for lawyers but Charlie was idiotic to say so. Had he been fortified with sloe gin he would have known better. Now, Mystic Meg says, he will be shuffled off the shadow front bench in a predictable political game of cards to munch a sour cooking apple. He’s had a good run and can go on Mastermind; special subject: flip sides of 1960s singles. Or he could join the circus,