Whatever happened to the rule of law?

Yesterday we had the spectacle of Harriet Harman revealing that whatever else she is it is difficult to imagine calling her a democrat.

On the Andrew Marr show, she said of the "Fred the Shred" affair, “The prime minister has said it is not acceptable and therefore it will not be accepted. And it might be enforceable in a court of law, this contract, but it’s not enforceable in the court of
public opinion and that’s where the government steps in.”

In other words, whatever the rights of the proposed pension of the former chief of RBS, what matters is what the Prime Minister personally thinks, and if he can find no legal way to reduce the pension other means will be used.

I was brought up to believe that a contract has legal force, so long as it has been entered freely by both parties without coercion, and that it is legal in itself.

Now it seems that that the prime minister can annul such contracts by fiat. Worse, that he can do it on behalf of the people. An individual thus has no rights, even if he has acted perfectly legally in full compliance with the law when he acted, if the "mob" shout loudly enough.

I admit that I think that he is receiving an obscene amount of pension, and that having ruined so many people's savings he barely deserves any pension at all.

I have no revulsion with that principle. I am alarmed at the posturing of Harman. (She is seeking to create an image to enable her to succeed Brown in any leadership election, - which on its own should question her sanity, - about wanting to inherit the mess of party and economy.)

Democracy has come to assume a frightening appearance in attacking individuals outside the law for acting lawfully, if not in a way pleasing to others. (I am not very impressed by the way "The Speaker" has behaved, favouring the executive and milking the taxpayer, nor other bankers, and especially those who have done me harm, but I thought that I was in a society where legal acts are tolerated and where the executive does not use its power to attack individuals who reveal its own incompetence.)