The German court's decision to hand a life sentence to the man who drove a car into a crowded Christmas market in Berlin is a stark reminder of the gulf between Continental efficiency and British legal dithering. The attacker, a failed asylum seeker, killed 12 and injured dozens more in a 2016 attack that shook the nation. Yet within a matter of years, justice has been served.
Contrast this with the UK, where endless appeals under the Human Rights Act often see terrorists out on licence before their victims' wounds have healed. The UK's counter-terror chief rightly praised the German verdict as 'swift and decisive', but one wonders if a similar outcome would ever be achieved here. The City of London, ever watchful of risk, will note that judicial certainty is a form of stability.
When the state fails to act decisively, it erodes trust in the rule of law and, by extension, the fiscal fabric that underpins our markets. This case is a reminder that the cost of legal indecision is measured not just in lives lost, but in the discount that the global capital markets place on a nation's governance.
