When the Rule of Law Breaks
The End of Civil Peace?
In any functioning democracy, the Rule of Law acts as the invisible thread that binds citizens to the state and to one another. It is the sacred pact that underpins civilised society—the assurance that disputes will be settled not with fists or fire but with evidence, due process, and impartial adjudication. But what happens when that pact frays or, worse, snaps entirely?
The stark observation that, in the UK, “the Rule of Law is broken” is not hyperbole. Increasingly, we are witnessing a breakdown of trust in the legal and judicial systems. It is not simply that laws exist and are not enforced. The deeper problem is that justice is not seen to be done—and in many cases, is objectively not done at all. When citizens perceive that the law no longer functions as a shield for the innocent and a sword against the guilty, a primal and dangerous alternative begins to surface: the instinct to take the law into one’s own hands.
Let’s look at the evidence. Alleging that the rule of law is indeed broken is as serious as it gets, and so, the proof has to be conclusive. I first consciously encountered a hole in the rule of law when I, along with other parents from Our Duty, went to the Tavistock to hold its executive to account. We told them they were hurting our children, we asked them to stop, they denied it, we asked them to investigate. We returned, three months later in December 2019 to follow-up, again just a denial. At this point, the urge to administer justice was overwhelming; however, the rule of law would work for us, wouldn’t it? No chance. The former chief executive, Paul Jenkins, he who claimed to know nothing of the maiming and sterilising of our children, could have stopped it. He chose not to, he remains unpunished for that crime. Today, he is swanning around, living off the fat of a hefty and over-generous NHS pension, instead of languishing in jail where he belongs. Others guilty of harming our children include James Barrett and Leighton Seal and James Bellringer, Helen Webberly and Susie Green, all similarly in need of justice that seems not to be forthcoming.
This is a breach of contract: the unwritten, social covenant in which we citizens delegate the administration of justice to the state in return for not administering it ourselves. What then, are we expected to do now the state has declined to fulfil its half of the bargain?
But the gender scandal is just my pet peeve, there are other realms where the state is in dereliction of its duty.
We could look at other examples where justice is not done or is not seen to be done, such as the sexual abuse of countless teenage girls in those towns overrun by culturally incompatible immigrants. From Rotherham to Ballymena, the law is not keeping our children safe from rapists.
If the law will not protect our children from these abusers, then at some point, parents will realise that they are obliged to step in and fill the void left by the ineffectual, broken state apparatus.
We have probably needed a child-protection militia for decades, it might be a wonder to some as to why one has not emerged. The truth is that the law-abiding citizen believes in the Rule of Law, such a militia might well bypass it. But that belief, that article of faith is being tested as never before. Who is safeguarding our children if the state has abrogated its responsibility and parents are denied the authority?
Respect is earned, and that holds true for the Rule of Law. Respect can be lost in an instant, too. Lady Justice’s fall from grace seems to have become just another emblem of the decline of the West.
The Implied Contract: Law in Exchange for Restraint
Society rests on a foundational compromise: we renounce personal retribution on the understanding that the state will act in our stead. We do not take up arms against thieves, murderers, or fraudsters because the police will apprehend them, and the courts will deliver judgment. This is the moral glue that prevents lynch mobs and keeps vigilantes in fiction.
That moral glue has been dissolved.
This unwritten contract has been broken by those charged with its maintenance. The growing chasm between legal principle and lived reality is breeding a dangerous cynicism. When victims are ignored, when criminals go unpunished—or worse, protected—and when legal institutions become politically selective, the Rule of Law ceases to function as a universal principle and becomes a privilege of the powerful.
Take the case of Lucy Connolly - a mother imprisoned for expressing her opinion.
One need not look far to find examples of two-tier policing and two-tier justice in UK (a simple Google search for those terms will provide much material). We see justice being administered to uphold political ideology instead of natural law. Thus when it is administered, it is not done so fairly, and when it is not administered, that too is unjust. Consider the numerous high-profile cases in which justice has not only been delayed but ultimately denied. Consider the repeated failures of police to act on clear threats to children, women, or vulnerable groups—whether in grooming gangs, medical scandals, or elsewhere. Consider how courts are increasingly unable—or unwilling—to enforce the law without regard to identity, ideology, or influence.
Do you remember reading about sentences commuted because the perpetrator is transgender, or when he did not understand that raping little girls was illegal?
Lady Justice is portrayed as blindfolded, carrying scales in one hand and a sword in the other. In today’s Britain she sees “identity”, the scales are unbalanced by political interference, and the sword is wielded capriciously.
The Rule of Law has become unruly.
What Comes After Trust Is Gone?
The danger here is not merely the decay into uselessness of the institutions of justice, the great peril is societal collapse. When the Rule of Law is no longer credible, people will not tolerate these injustices indefinitely. Human beings are moral creatures, and when formal systems fail them, informal ones take their place. This is how vendettas begin. This is how mobs form. This is how the social contract disintegrates.
To acknowledge this is not to advocate for it—it is a warning. A society in which citizens feel they must take justice into their own hands is a society on the verge of anarchy. And yet, that is precisely where we are headed if this trajectory is not arrested.
“If I knew that I could get away with it, I would administer justice.” is a sentiment that I have heard many times talking with parents whose children have been abused by the state. The only fix to this mindset is to administer justice on their behalf, for the urges they are suppressing are as righteous as it gets.
The principle is simple, even primal: if the law will not protect the innocent, the innocent will be forced to protect themselves. And if justice cannot be obtained through due process, it will be sought outside it.
The Remedy: Repair or Ruin
This is a crisis of legitimacy. Fixing it requires more than funding or managerial tweaks. It requires a moral recommitment to impartial justice. It means removing ideology from police procedures, rooting political bias out of prosecutorial decisions, and returning the judiciary to its role as servant—not sculptor—of the law.
If this cannot be done, we must accept the consequence: a permanent erosion of civil peace, the rise of parallel systems of power, and the reversion to the ancient, brutal rule of might. Indeed, it might well be necessary to pass through a phase of populist law to demonstrate the need to refresh the covenant of state law. There has been a Cold War waged against the innocent and the righteous, it might well have to turn hot to stimulate a renewal.
The philosopher John Locke, writing in the aftermath of England’s civil unrest, put it plainly: when law ceases to be the common rule of right and wrong, “force becomes the umpire.” And when force is the arbiter, the future is not merely uncertain—it is ugly, chaotic, and irreversible.
The choice is clear and stark. Either we re-establish the Rule of Law so that it truly serves the common man, or we resign ourselves to a world in which he will no longer abide by it. This is not a threat; it is a diagnosis. And time is running out for a cure.