The vanishing jury?

Peter Hitchens writes:

Truth is, Europe doesn’t want juries

Why do you think the official report on juries was commissioned, with its damaging claim that they don’t understand what judges tell them? I will tell you.

The British Establishment knows that, if we stay in the EU, we will sooner or later have to abolish jury trial because it does not fit in with European law and we will be forced to give it up in some sordid deal.

So it is softening us up for this moment, a potentially disastrous loss of liberty.

That is also why they have been holding the first non-jury trial in England for 400 years, on the grounds that they supposedly couldn’t prevent the jury from being nobbled.

Couldn’t be bothered to prevent this, more likely. One of the allegedly dangerous defendants in this trial was given bail and so lightly watched that he has apparently vanished during the lunch hour.

Yet he is now said to be so dangerous that we mustn’t approach him if we see him - but he was let out for lunch? Excuse me?

I wouldn’t trust the people responsible for this to do a night’s babysitting, let alone protect a jury from tampering.