The news that Donald Trump intends to nominate David Blanche as Attorney General has sent predictable tremors through the chattering classes. Blanche, a lawyer who has defended Trump in the classified documents case, is now poised to become the top legal officer in the land. The UK Law Commission, in a rare intervention, has raised due process concerns. But let us not pretend this is anything other than a symptom of a deeper rot: the decay of institutional legitimacy that began long before Trump descended his golden escalator.
Compare this to the late Roman Republic. When Sulla marched on Rome, he did so not as a tyrant but as a consul whose authority had been undermined. The Senate, paralysed by factionalism, had failed to uphold its own rules. Sound familiar? Trump’s rise is not an aberration; it is the logical consequence of a political class that has spent decades mocking the very idea of impartial justice. The Law Commission’s hand-wringing is the equivalent of a vestal virgin complaining about the smell of blood in the Forum.
Blanche’s nomination is a masterstroke of political theatre. It signals that the Justice Department will no longer be a tool of the establishment but a weapon for the executive. The UK’s concerns are quaintly Victorian: they assume that due process is a sacred cow. But when the cow has been repeatedly slaughtered for partisan gain, why should anyone be surprised that the new butcher is given a sharp knife?
The intellectual decadence of our era is laid bare. We pretend that the law is a Platonic ideal, when in reality it is a battlefield. The Left has used the law to pursue political enemies; now the Right will do the same. This is not the death of democracy but its mutation into something darker: a plebiscitary autocracy where the only rule is loyalty.
The UK Law Commission might as well be quoting Cicero. The republic is dead. Long live the empire.
