This article is taken from the March 2026 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Get five issues for just £25.
Perhaps it’s because Magna Carta has been in the news recently, but the ghost of that nearly dead guarantor of our liberties has been whispering uncomfortably in my ear as the outrage has exploded over Andrew (the artist formerly known as Prince) and Peter (the soon-to-be-formerly Lord Mandelson).
No Freeman shall be taken or imprisoned, or be disseised of his Freehold, or Liberties, or free Customs, or be outlawed, or exiled, or any other wise destroyed; nor will We not pass upon him, nor condemn him, but by lawful judgment of his Peers, or by the Law of the land.
Now the stripping of Prince Andrew of his titles and styles and dukedom, etc., has been done legitimately according to law, and Keir Starmer seems intent upon bringing forward legislation to allow Peter Mandelson (and any peer) to be stripped of his peerage but (and I realise that I sit almost alone in this discomfort), this is all being done without either of them being convicted of anything. There has been no lawful judgment of his peers.
With Andrew that is because he doesn’t appear to have broken a law in this country, and is not currently being investigated for committing a crime elsewhere (although that may change if he ever does speak to the American police as they have requested). With Mandelson the police are currently investigating him, and let’s see where that process takes us and him.
However, the desire to strip them of their peerages and other honours, styles and titles does not come purely from concern that they have broken the law. Our concern is also that they have behaved reprehensibly, and given cover to a man who behaved unimaginably awfully.
They may have operated within the law, they may not, but they have certainly behaved in a way which puts them outside the boundaries of the public realm.
How, then, do we square this? Refusing to allow a person to defend themselves, and be judged by their peers, before stripping them of their position and titles, feels uncomfortably like an abandonment of natural justice.
I am reminded of that spine-tingling scene in A Man for All Seasons where William Roper says to Thomas More, “So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!” “Yes,” replies More. “What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?” “Yes,” he replies. “I’d cut down every law in England to do that!” More’s next line has stayed with me since I first heard it as a child:
And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned ’round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man’s laws, not God’s! And if you cut them down, and you’re just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake!
So what do we do? Well, as so often, we are not the first people to have these worries and our own historical treasure chest has examples to offer us. What do we do when political figures have acted in such a way that may not breach the actual law but deserve punishment after judgment by their peers?
We have the precedents of impeachment, and of bills of “pains and penalties” — where the vehicle of a bill allows a person to be tried before the High Court of Parliament. This allowed them to defend themselves, should they so desire, with counsel and cross-examination, and also allowed the political system to exercise its righteous indignation.
Parliament, despite the monkeying around with the constitution by Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, is still a court; it still has the power to summon people to its bar and to pass sentence. Use that power.
Now, a word of caution: the reason that this power fell into abeyance is that it was abused. It does not take much imagination to see how such a power could be abused now, by whichever party holds power.
However, it feels less open to abuse than the swift and sudden exercise of power without giving the accused any chance of defence.
Even really obvious villains deserve some form of due process. When I tweeted about it, I found myself assailed by people demanding to know what more evidence I needed beyond the cache of emails which have been released “unless you assume these to be fake” (as one interlocutor put it).
“Assume” is a telling word. We are all assuming things, based on screenshots of redacted emails and photographs we see online and are justly outraged. But to move from outrage to action demands that these are assessed more thoroughly, with the accused given the chance of defence (an option they may freely choose not to take up).
So, yes, I would give the Devil benefit of law, as I would Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and Peter Mandelson — not for their sake but for mine, and for yours, just as the charter of Runnymede promised us all those years ago.
