A former top Barrister has hit out at Labour’s “socialist regime” amid plans to scrap jury trials apart from in certain cases.

Speaking to GB News, Steven Barrett told host Martin Daubney the Government “doesn’t like freedom” and the decision hands “too much power” to the judge.

The dramatic overhaul of the criminal justice system has been revealed through a confidential memorandum from the Justice Secretary David Lammy in documents marked “sensitive and official”, which outline the most significant changes to trial procedures in decades.

Under the proposed reforms, all remaining criminal offences would be determined by judges sitting without juries, fundamentally altering how crime and punishment is administered in England and Wales.

Delivering his verdict on the plans, Mr Barrett said: “I’m afraid that’s because Keir Starmer is running a socialist regime, and they don’t like juries.

“They don’t like freedom, they don’t like independence from the state, and they don’t like small businesses, that’s why they’re crushing pubs.”

He added: “This is what socialism is, and it’s just really a human addiction to control. So what they want to do is to have as many crimes as possible that a state employee will judge you on.

“And that state employee may well be called a judge, fine. But frankly, I’m not going to consider them a judge in in my eyes.”

Arguing the move would mean there is “too much power” for one person to wield, Mr Barrett said: “A state employee who receives payment from the state, training by the state by DEI before they’re even appointed, who receives a pension from the state and who is effectively just an arm of the state, is not in any way an independent judicial figure.

“This is too much power for any one human being to wield. They’re not going to care what the outcome of the case is, they’re just dealing with disputes between merchants and contracts.”

Admitting he would “respect judges more” if they “refused this power”, he added: “It’s technically a breach of Magna Carta, but we’ve tolerated it since the First World War because the judges are not going to get corrupted by this power, the power to sentence people to prison.

“Now, that is a power that can corrupt a man, and look at the alleged riots and the reactions that they had and how quickly the judiciary jumped when the Government said so.

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“I’m not trying to insult our judges, I still adore them and hold them the highest respect, but I will respect them more if they refuse this power, if they simply say, no, we should not. No human being should have this power.”

Offering a reference to Lord of the Rings, Mr Barrett explained: “In The Lord of the Rings, the two most respectable characters are Galadriel and Gandalf, because when offered absolute power, They turn it down. That’s what you do, you have to have some humility.”

As Martin argued the Government claim this is the “only way to clear the backlog”, the Barrister disagreed, saying: “No it wouldn’t, because why wouldn’t a good and honest judge take exactly as much time as a jury to deliberate?

“What they’re saying is we’ll speed up the system because the judge will find everyone guilty. So they’re all there admitting what they’re going to do, they are showing us what they are before they do it.”

Hitting out at the judges further, Mr Barrett concluded: “That’s how these petty little tyrants work, they will lie to you. They will give you some plausible sounding reason, but they will show you who they are.

“And the only reason to say it will speed things up is if the judge finds everyone guilty, that’s it. It’s like clearing the asylum backlog. The only way they’ve speeded it up is by giving everybody asylum. It’s like Shabana Mahmood’s plan to punish migrants, it’s to reclassify everyone as a citizen. It’s simply a con.”

In a statement, a Ministry of Justice spokesman said: “No final decision has been taken by Government.

“We have been clear there is a crisis in the courts, causing pain and anguish to victims – with 78,000 cases in the backlog and rising – which will require bold action to put right.”

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