Balls to all that

I had a brief moment of hope when I saw this headline on the index page of the BBC website: "Balls criticises Bulger comments". Finally, I thought. The Education Minister has summoned up the courage to tell the mother of James Bulger (now known, as a result of remarriage, as Denise Fergus) to cool it. Since the news emerged that Jon Venables, one of James's killers all those years ago, had been returned to custody, Mrs Fergus has demanded to know what new offence Venables is alleged to have committed, demanded that his probation officers should be fired for incompetence, and now demanded that the Children's Commissioner, Maggie Atkinson, should be fired for suggesting that Venables and his fellow murderer Robert Thompsom had been too young to be tried in an adult court in the first place.

Once I opened up the story itself, my optimism evaporated. Having had a week to gauge public opinion, presumably by reading the Sun and the Mail, Balls had decided to come out on Mrs Fergus's side, and against Maggie Atkinson's calm and reasoned approach. The Commissioner has not at any point suggested that Venables and Thompson should have been treated with gretaer leniency, only that children charged with heinous offences should not be tried in an adult court unless they are at least 12 years old, as is the case in most other countries. With an election coming, however, Balls (who is, be it recalled, a close buddy of Gordon Brown) has gone unerringly for the populist option.

Few of us can claim to understand the depth of Mrs Fergus's grief, and I for one am grateful for that. But her anguish cannot be allowed to override basic principles of justice. Revealing the nature of Venables's latest crime would remove all possibility of his receiving a fair trial, if it comes to that. And firing the Children's Commissioner for expressing a view that would be uncontroversial in most of the world would send a very worrying signal about the future of the English justice system, which exists precisely to prevent eye-for-an-eye retribution.

Amazingly, while Balls plays to the crowd, it falls to a Philip Johnston, a leader writer at the far-from-liberal Daily Telegraph, to deliver arobust defence of the principle that children must be treated differently from adults in criminal trials. (Sorry, link won't work!) Good for you, Mr Johnston -- but I hope you're ready for the hate messages.

Footnote: David Aaronovitch has also come out in favour of the rule of law in March 16th's Times. You have to hope that Ed Balls is reading some of this stuff.