Blair ‘sacked’ Irvine after row over legal reforms
The Sunday Times has reported that Tony Blair sacked Lord Irvine after the then Lord Chancellor refused to accept the Prime Minister’s legal reforms.
The paper reports that a senior government official was unhappy with the plans to scrap the 1,400 year old Lord Chancellor’s department.
It is believed that after hearing rumours regarding his future, Derry Irvine asked to see the Prime Minister after the weekly Cabinet.
In that and other meetings, it is understood that he repeated the arguments that he made to a parliamentary committee in April that the traditional role of head of the judiciary sitting in Cabinet was ‘one and indivisible’. He also claimed that his post ‘worked successfully in practice’.
These arguments fell on deaf ears as Blair was determined to introduce radical reforms to the legal and justice system, replacing the Lord Chancellor’s office with a new department for constitutional affairs, which is to be headed by Lord Falconer.
Government sources have reported that at the final confrontation last Thursday, Downing Street aides were concerned that Irvine might ‘explode’ and were anxious to calm him down.
A senior government figure said: ‘There was no way you could have an esoteric, philosophic debate about the reforms with someone there who didn’t want to do it. It was very hard, which is why it took so long and has been a bit haphazard.’
‘This has been a terrible trauma for the prime minister. This is his old mentor, his friend and the one who gave him a chance in life. To do that was the equivalent of when he sacked Peter Mandelson.’
‘He didn’t want to end up sacking Derry. He thought he would go voluntarily, not least if he could persuade him that he would be the last real Lord Chancellor.’
