The result was the creation of a Ministry of Justice.Now, instead of a judge steeped in the traditions of the English common law, we have a Lord Chancellor who is a career politician, Chris Grayling. That is miserably modern, but is it better? Would it be surprising if Mr Grayling's instinct were to try to increase political influence over the judiciary?

A little delving into the LCJ's selection process only serves to increase the concern that the Judicial Appointments Commission is only too happy to do the Ministry's bidding. Astonishingly, candidates had to provide as a reference "the most senior civil servant with whom you have had significant contact . . . "  

This is wrong. Judges should not be given incentives to cosy up to civil servants. While a good reference should not lead to automatic disqualification, the favoured candidates should be those with bad references, or better still those who have had no dealings with senior civil servants at all.

The Lord Chancellor now has a statutory duty to uphold the independence of the judiciary. That sounds good. But so did Stalin's 1936 Constitution-impeccably modern in its day — which reassuringly proclaimed: "Judges are independent and subject only to the law."  

Ringing declarations of independence and modernity conceal the extent to which politicians are trying to increase their control over judges. What we really need is a conservative Lord Chief Justice who will tell them and their most senior civil servants to get lost. Preferably in old-fashioned English, or better still in Anglo-Saxon.