So it has come to this. The wife of California’s governor, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, finds herself under the unblinking gaze of the US Justice Department. An investigation, of course. Into what, precisely, remains as opaque as a London fog. But the British chattering classes, ever eager to cast a stone, have already marshalled their moral artillery. They question the standards of due process across the pond. The irony would be hilarious if it weren’t so predictable.
Let us step back from the immediate frenzy and consider the broader tableau. The United States, that brash upstart republic, has always laboured under the shadow of its own exceptionalism. Its legal system, a Frankenstein’s monster of common law and frontier justice, lurches from scandal to scandal. And now, a governor’s spouse becomes a pawn in a political game that smacks of the Star Chamber. Yet the British, who perfected the art of secret justice with the Official Secrets Act and the D-Notice system, now affect shock. They tut-tut from their ivory towers while their own House of Commons debates the finer points of ‘due process’ as if it were a newfangled invention.
But let us not be too harsh. The British have a point, albeit a hypocritical one. The spectacle of a political figure’s family being dragged through the mud is a hallmark of decadent empires. Think of the later Roman Republic, where personal vendettas masqueraded as legal proceedings. Or the Tudors, where a charge of treason could be conjured from thin air. We are witnessing a similar degradation. The Newsom affair is but a symptom of a deeper malaise: the weaponisation of justice for partisan ends.
Consider the timing. Newsom, a Democratic governor with national ambitions, is a thorn in the side of the Trumpian right. An investigation into his wife, whatever its merits, sends a chilling signal. It echoes the Clinton years, where Whitewater morphed into a sprawling inquiry into a stained dress. Due process becomes a theatre of the absurd, with the public as a captive audience. The British, who have their own history of political prosecutions from the Zinoviev letter to the cash-for-honours scandal, should recognise the pattern. But they choose to gawp instead.
What, then, is to be done? The answer, as ever, lies in a return to first principles. Due process is not a mere technicality; it is the bulwark against tyranny. When it is bent to fit political convenience, the entire edifice of liberal democracy trembles. Both the US and the UK stand on the precipice of a new decadence. We have seen this before: the late Roman world, where justice was a plaything of the powerful, and the rule of law dissolved into the whim of emperors. For the Brits to question American standards while their own system creaks under the weight of party patronage and press manipulation is, to put it mildly, a case of the pot calling the kettle black.
Yet there is a lesson here for all of us. The Newsom affair is a mirror reflecting our collective decline. It is a reminder that without a robust, impartial judiciary and a culture that respects legal norms, we are no better than the barbarians at the gates. The British lawmakers who wring their hands over American due process should look to their own backyard. They might find that the rot has spread further than they care to admit.
In the end, this is not about Gavin Newsom or his wife. It is about the soul of the West. And if the British want to question the standards of the Americans, they should first ensure their own house is in order. Otherwise, their commentary is just noise, the empty chatter of an empire that has long since forgotten what justice looks like.
