The judge
Lord Sumption
Jonathan Sumption sat on the Supreme Court from 2012 to 2018. In his 2019 BBC Reith Lectures, "Law's Expanding Empire," he argued that the law is now "taking over the space once occupied by politics," and warned of democracy quietly draining out of our institutions as courts decide questions that voters used to settle. It is the same mechanism Starkey describes, stated by a man who sat at the top of the system.
Where he parts from Starkey: Sumption wants to shore up politics and judicial self-restraint, not stage a Great Repeal. He argues against a written constitution and does not call for tearing up the rights framework wholesale.
Source: 2019 Reith Lectures, on BBC Sounds and reviewed by the Judicial Power Project
The academics
The Judicial Power Project
For over a decade a group of serious legal scholars, led by the Oxford professor Richard Ekins and including the jurist John Finnis, has run the Judicial Power Project at Policy Exchange. Their sustained argument is that the courts, at home and in Strasbourg, have taken on questions that belong to politics, and that the balance needs restoring toward elected institutions. This is the constitutional core of Starkey's case, made in careful legal prose rather than polemic.
Where they part from Starkey: They argue case by case for incremental reform of judicial power. They are not making a sweeping cultural or civilisational claim about national decline.
Source: Judicial Power Project, Policy Exchange
The historian who documented it
Professor Vernon Bogdanor
Bogdanor, professor of government at Oxford, is no critic of the reforms. His 2009 book "The New British Constitution" argues that the changes after 1997 amount to a new constitution, "created before our eyes," the greatest constitutional upheaval since before the First World War, moving Britain from the sovereignty of Parliament toward the sovereignty of a constitution. He is the most useful witness of all, because he welcomes the change and still describes it in almost exactly the terms Starkey uses.
Where he parts from Starkey: Completely, on the remedy. Bogdanor approves of the new settlement and wants it taken further, with more direct democracy, not repealed.
Source: Vernon Bogdanor, "The New British Constitution" (2009)
The left-wing root
Professor J. A. G. Griffith
The idea did not start on the right. In 1979 the socialist law professor John Griffith gave a famous lecture, "The Political Constitution," arguing that Britain's constitution is political rather than legal, and that contested questions should be settled through Parliament and the ballot box, not handed to judges. Griffith distrusted judicial power precisely because he thought judges leaned conservative. The mechanism he defended is the one Starkey wants back.
Where he parts from Starkey: Everything else. Griffith came from the Marxist left and would have shared few of Starkey's cultural conclusions. His point was that democratic accountability, not judges, should hold power. That point is now shared across the spectrum.
Source: J. A. G. Griffith, "The Political Constitution," Modern Law Review, 1979
The left today
Lord Glasman
Maurice Glasman, the Labour peer who founded Blue Labour, arrives at much the same place from the communitarian left. His long complaint is that Labour and liberalism have let justice and rights crowd out democracy and the common good, and that a managerial, technocratic state has pushed aside democratic politics and the common law. That is the political constitution argument in Blue Labour language. He also goes further than most of the people on this page: he has called for the UK to leave the ECHR and to repeal the Human Rights Act. He is the rarest witness here, a sitting Labour peer who backs both the diagnosis and the headline remedy.
Where he parts from Starkey: His reasons are not Starkey's. Glasman argues from the common good, the dignity of labour and a critique of the market as much as of the state. He is a Labour man trying to renew Labour, and he rejects much of Starkey's cultural and economic account. What they share is the structural claim, that elected politics rather than rights-based technocracy should settle contested questions.
Source: George Peretz, UK Constitutional Law Association (2025)
The realignment analyst
David Goodhart
Goodhart approaches it from sociology, not law. His 2017 book "The Road to Somewhere" describes a values gap between mobile, educated "Anywheres" who tend to staff the professions and institutions, and rooted "Somewheres" whose priorities are more often overruled than met. It is a different vocabulary for a related observation: decisions drifting away from the majority and toward the people who run the machinery.
Where he parts from Starkey: Goodhart's is a cultural and sociological account, not a constitutional one, and he writes as a liberal reformer rather than an advocate of repeal.
Source: David Goodhart, "The Road to Somewhere" (2017)
The politicians
A major party, in its own words
The remedy has moved from the fringe to official policy. In October 2025, after a legal review by the shadow attorney general Lord Wolfson concluded the Convention placed "significant constraints" on government, the Conservative Party under Kemi Badenoch adopted leaving the ECHR and repealing the Human Rights Act as policy. In her conference speech she said the party "must leave the ECHR and repeal the Human Rights Act." Robert Jenrick had argued the party would "die" unless it left. Even opponents conceded that what once sounded like fringe rhetoric was now spoken at the centre of politics, and the Labour government said it would re-examine how the Convention is interpreted by the courts.
The honest caveat: This is fiercely contested and party political. Lord Wolfson, who led the review, had himself supported ECHR membership only two years earlier. Unions and human-rights lawyers argue that leaving would strip protections from ordinary people, not just failed asylum claimants. That argument is put fairly on the case against page.
Source: BBC News, October 2025
What this does and does not prove
Put these people in a room and they would argue. Bogdanor welcomes the new constitution. Sumption would keep the Convention. Griffith came at it from the Marxist left. None of them is a follower of David Starkey, and citing them is not a claim that they endorse his conclusions. The point is narrower and stronger than that. The central factual claim, that power has moved from elected politics to law and unelected bodies, is not one controversial man's grievance. It is visible to a former Supreme Court justice, to Oxford professors who span the political spectrum, to a Labour peer who would leave the Convention and to a major party. You can accept the diagnosis and still argue about the cure, which is exactly what the plan and the objections are for.
