The growing danger of state control in modern Britain

Britain likes to imagine itself as the home of liberty, fair play and the ancient right to be judged by one’s peers. 

But the country that once lectured the world about due process is now quietly dismantling its own pillars of democracy, plank by plank, while the public scrolls, shrugs and sleepwalks into a future far darker than most realise.

We have tolerated digital identification schemes creeping forward with barely a murmur. 

We have allowed protest restrictions so broad and so vague that peaceful citizens can be arrested for chanting too loudly. 

We have watched police turn up at people’s doors over “hurtful” tweets. 

Now, ministers want to strip away one of the oldest protections in the English legal tradition: the right to a jury trial.

Individually, each development could be dismissed as administrative reform, modernisation, or just a “sign of the times.” Collectively, they form something far more chilling: the architecture of a managed society, where rights are not guaranteed but granted – selectively, momentarily, and always revocably.

And this must be said clearly: a state that weakens its courts, controls its protests, polices speech and tracks its citizens is not a free democracy. It is a democracy in name only.

Justice removed from the people

The latest proposal, revealed in a memo from Justice Secretary David Lammy, is to scrap jury trials for almost all offences attracting sentences of five years or less. That category includes a vast swathe of crimes. Instead, cases would be shipped off to a new “bench division” where a single judge sits alone.

Think about that for a moment. No peers. No public oversight. No citizen scrutiny. 

Just the state, confronting the accused, with no intervening buffer of ordinary people.

It is difficult to overstate what a rupture this is. Jury trials have stood at the centre of English justice for centuries. They are not an optional extra. They are the mechanism that keeps power honest.

If juries are a democratic guardrail, these proposals tear that guardrail off the cliff.

Yes, the courts have a backlog – seventy-eight thousand cases were awaiting completion by June, double the number before the pandemic. 

Yes, the justice system is strained. But a crisis does not justify amputating the limb rather than treating the infection. Cutting juries because the system is overloaded is equivalent to banning passengers from a sinking ship because there aren’t enough life jackets.

The president of the Law Society called the proposals “extreme.” That word is polite. Gideon Cammerman KC went further, calling it “an act of cultural vandalism.” He is right. And vandalism is often followed by looting – of rights, of accountability, of public trust.

This is not just about juries

If this were a single reform, it would still be alarming. But it is part of a pattern so clear it is practically fluorescent.

Digital ID systems – sold under the guise of convenience – will in years to come enable the state to track, record and cross-reference nearly every aspect of daily life. Once in place, they rarely retreat. They tighten.

Protest laws have been rewritten so broadly that the police can shut down demonstrations based on the “noise” or “disruption” they might cause. Not do cause – might cause. The very point of protest is to be heard; now, it is a pretext for arrest.

Online speech has become another frontier. Police officers turning up at private homes because someone reported “malicious communication” or “offence” is something we once associated with authoritarian regimes. Today, in Britain, it is becoming normalised.

Layer these powers together, and the picture is unmistakable: a state increasingly intolerant of challenge, oversight and dissent.

Now add an erosion of the right to jury trial – and justice itself becomes centralised, technocratic, and detached from the public.

This is not a slippery slope. It is a runway.

The logic of control always expands

What ministers present as a pragmatic solution to court backlogs is, in practice, a transfer of authority from the people to the state. It is the state saying: we cannot process justice efficiently, so we will own it completely.

Efficiency is a tempting pretext for authoritarianism. History shows that once you strip away a right in the name of convenience, governments rarely stop there. Power concentrates. Accountability thins. Transparency evaporates.

This proposal is not about solving the backlog. If it were, the government would be investing in judges, court staff, digital infrastructure, and the legal aid system. Instead, it is proposing a shortcut that bypasses the citizen entirely.

A backlog is a logistical challenge. Removing juries is a political decision.

And if the government is willing to do this in the open, imagine what future governments – less benign, less competent, or less democratic – might do with the precedent.

A public that does not react will lose everything

The UK is not yet a police state. But it is edging towards a model in which the boundaries between public safety and state control are blurred, where rights are conditional, and where the public has lost the reflex to resist.

Authoritarianism does not always arrive with boots on the ground. Sometimes it comes wearing the badge of “modernisation.” Sometimes it comes disguised as efficiency. Sometimes it comes with civil servants drafting memos that quietly rewrite centuries of liberty.

The public should be furious. They should be loud. They should be unignorable.

Because once jury trials are gone, once surveillance is embedded, once speech is policed and protest curtailed, there will be no guardrails left.

And the people of this country deserve to live in a Britain where justice is not something delivered to them by the state, but something carried out with them at the centre.

Wake up. Speak up. The line is here. And we dare not cross it.