LABOUR MPs are rebelling against government plans to drastically restrict the right to jury trials. They are right to do so.

This erosion of a fundamental and ancient right — to be convicted solely on the judgement of one’s peers — is the most lurid of this government’s attacks on democracy and freedom. Defeating it should be the start of a broader democratic fightback against the state authoritarianism which is Keir Starmer’s default setting.

Thirty-nine backbenchers have written to Justice Secretary David Lammy shredding his proposals, ostensibly introduced to deal with a huge courts backlog — itself the results of Tory austerity which ministers have yet to properly reverse.

They rightly call the proposal “an ineffective way of dealing with the crippling backlog in cases in our criminal justice system.” It will make only a marginal difference to the problem it seeks to solve.

But it is fair to suppose that the main motive for the change is increasing the power of the state at the expense of the people by stripping out a check on the power of the Establishment.

The labour movement has always had a healthy suspicion of judges. Taken as a group, they are pillars of class power and hostile to the working-class and to radical movements for social change.

To give them more authority under the pretext of efficiency is retrograde. And Lammy has made it clear that even if the court backlog is ever cleared the change will remain permanent.

As the dissenting MPs point out, there are better ways to get cases moving faster through the courts. Increasing the number of sitting days would be an obvious move.

Taking the delivery of prisoners to court away from private monopoly Serco would also assist, since delays caused by its notorious inefficiency also make a major impact on the backlog.

That, of course, would mean breaking with the whole outsourcing scam beloved of both Tories and New Labour and is not something the present government would willingly contemplate.

But rebuilding the state role in the provision of services in this case goes hand-in-hand with the protection of our rights from the state’s overweening coercive function.

Lammy and Starmer must be made to back down on their plan. The rebellious Labour MPs should not blink.

Starmer’s Trump trade illusions

KEIR STARMER is being played for a fool by Donald Trump. As Liberal Democrat MP Layla Moran, who chairs the Commons health committee, has pointed out the much-vaunted trade agreements he has signed with the US president are “built on sand.”

The so-called “tech prosperity” agreement has been put on hold by Washington in order to enforce fresh concessions.

The “milestone” deal on pharmaceuticals, which threatens to force the NHS to pay more for medicines in order to prop up drug company profits, apparently does not exist beyond a press release.

And the US has yet to ratify concessions made to British farmers in the so-called “historic” trade deal. Quotas for beef imports into the US were supposed to be agreed last month but have yet to be approved.

Nor have hopes of the elimination of tariffs on imports of British steel and aluminium materialised.

As Moran put it, the government’s belief that Trump is negotiating in good faith is “naive.” He treats the British government with the same disdain as the rest of the world, interested only in squeezing the maximum advantage for US capital.

Starmer’s humiliating subservience to the despot in the White House has availed Britain nothing. It is past time for the prime minister to recognise the truth — Trump is no more our friend on the economy than on foreign policy.