A FOUNDING member of Cherie Blair’s elite Matrix chambers is to become the new Director of Public Prosecutions.
The choice of Ken Macdonald, QC, a defence specialist with a liberal background, was greeted with surprise across the legal profession yesterday. Few barristers or lawyers would have expected Mr Macdonald to swap his career as a top silk, earning up to £1 million a year, for the £145,000 post as senior prosecutor and head of the Crown Prosecution Service. He will take over from David Calvert Smith, QC, who is standing down after five years in the job.
Senior opposition MPs accused Tony Blair of cronyism in choosing one of his wife’s senior colleagues for the job. Three years ago Rabinder Singh, QC, another member of the chambers, was given the job of monitoring visa applications.
David Davis, the Shadow Deputy Prime Minister, said: “Many people will find this appointment astonishing. We have already had one Lord Chancellor who was the Prime Minister’s boss and the current one who is his former flatmate.” Simon Hughes, the Liberal Democrat Home Affairs spokesman, said he did not doubt that Mr Macdonald was up to the job but that the appointment was provocative.
He said: “This is becoming more and more a Government of who you know rather than what you know. Whether or not it is intended, jobs increasingly appear to go to people who are ‘one of us’.”
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Although Mr Macdonald, 50, has “new Labour” credentials, he is a public critic of government plans to reform criminal justice and his colleagues do not expect him to soften his opposition.
As head of the Criminal Bar Association he has been drawing up a counter-attack to plans to scrap trial by jury for some offences and recently published attacks on the government plans.
Educated at Oxford, where he was almost a direct contemporary of Mr Blair, he read law after university and is rated among the top nine criminal QCs in London. His cases include defending leading IRA and Middle Eastern terrorism suspects and major drug dealers, and he was a junior in the Matrix Churchill case over the alleged smuggling of arms to Iraq. Mr Macdonald joined the Matrix chambers, which prides itself on its speciality in human rights issues, not long after taking silk and no one expected he would move to the CPS headquarters around the corner from the Old Bailey.
His entry on the Matrix website quotes recent accolades for his work from legal guides including “absolutely super” from one and “very impressive and robust” from another. Another notes that he is “seen to pop up in all the best stuff” and “found favour in all quarters for his crisp advocacy style and supreme economy of language”.
The website also includes the comment: “Ken Macdonald QC is said to be a force to be reckoned with and adept at wielding the iron fist in the velvet glove.”
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He is also a fanatical Arsenal supporter, a fan of crime thrillers and film noir. He is married to a TV producer and has three children.
As the appointment was announced yesterday, one lawyer said: “I am a bit surprised to be quite honest because I have always seen him as radical anti-Establishment. Joining the Establishment is rather surprising. Taking the job of government prosecutor is certainly going over to the other side.” But another senior solicitor who has worked with him said: “It’s quite a refreshing choice and dramatic. He is youthful and energetic, a good lawyer, very independent and not at anyone’s beck and call. He is different from many of the DPPs who come up as prosecutors, take silk, do a little defence work and then just cross over.”
Mr Macdonald is the son of a scientist and went on to Oxford to read philosophy, politics and economics at St Edmund Hall. He was called to the Bar in 1978. Known as a clever and forceful advocate, he has been involved with legal reform groups including the Haldane Society and the Legal Action Group. He took silk in 1997 and has sat as a part-time judge.