It was 20 years ago today

When Derry Irvine told his boss ‘no way’

A uniquely powerful political figure suddenly resigns. An MP unexpectedly leaves Westminster to spend more time with his family. Scotland’s senior politician decides that her career in government is at an end.

All this happened 20 years ago today. The Scottish politician was Helen Liddell, secretary of state for Scotland. The MP was Alan Milburn, health secretary. And the political figure who fell from power was Lord Irvine of Lairg, lord chancellor.

Lord Irvine of Lairg (detail), 2004, by James Lloyd (Parliamentary Art Collection)

But the events of 12 June 2003 went far beyond Derry Irvine. As the Daily Telegraph reported the following day, in a story that carries a joint by-line though most of it was written by George Jones,

Tony Blair swept away 1,400 years of constitutional history last night in a cabinet reshuffle which paved the way for the abolition of the office of lord chancellor and the creation of a supreme court.

That, at least, was what a government press release had told us on 12 June 2003. It was a Thursday evening and the lord chief justice heard the news on the radio as he and other judges checked into a country house hotel for a long-planned awayday. Although rumours had been circulating, nobody had thought to tell them that a constitutional bombshell was on the way.

Not content with sacking his lord chancellor, Blair announced that he would be abolishing the historic post that Irvine had held for six years. Instead, there would be a secretary of state in cabinet and a lord speaker in parliament. The lord chancellor would no longer sit as a judge and the law lords would be replaced by a supreme court.

Blair was then told that the lord chancellor had hundreds of statutory obligations which could not be dumped on another minister. So the post was retained and its holder was made a secretary of state — originally for constitutional affairs and, since 2007, for justice. Lord Woolf delayed his retirement as lord chief justice to negotiate a “concordat” with Lord Falconer, Irvine’s successor, that was intended to protect judicial independence. That led, in turn, to the Constitutional Reform Act 2005.

Irvine kept his own counsel until 2009, resisting all invitations to discuss the way he had been treated. They say that revenge is a dish best served cold and Irvine’s response — his first and, I believe his last — was positively icy.