During the break-up with Kimberly Quinn that precipitated his break-up with the Home Office, David Blunkett is reported to have warned her: 'The law is on my side. I know because I made the law.' It doesn't quite have the melodramatic chill of Judge Dredd's 'I am the law,' but it comes close. And it's easy to imagine Blunkett saying it, for it nicely sums up the tragically self-important view he took of himself, and of the executive branch of government, during his time in office. It was a view shared by much of the New Labour administration. The law is the servant, they believed, of our duly elected political masters. It is what they say it is and what they want it to be.

LRB 8 July 2010 | PDF Download