Contempt of court?

There are times when the political ironies so accumulate that one can only admire the chutzpah. The Guardian reports:

"The lord chancellor, Lord Falconer, is expected to accuse the US government today of a "shocking affront" to the principles of democracy in deliberately seeking to put terrorist suspects beyond the reach of the law in Guantánamo Bay.
His comment, which comes in the text of a speech on Magna Carta to be delivered in Sydney, is the most outspoken attack yet on US policy over Guantánamo Bay by a senior member of the government. Lord Falconer will argue that acceptance of the rule of law means that the courts must be able to exercise jurisdiction over the executive. Otherwise the conduct of the executive is not defined and restrained by law. "It is because of that principle that the USA deliberately seeking to put the detainees beyond the reach of the law in Guantánamo Bay is so shocking an affront to the principles of democracy," he is expected to say."

Lord Falconer has never been elected to anything but owes his position as Lord Chancellor to his status as Mr Blair's former flatmate - yet he is prepared to lecture the US government on the principles of democracy? And as Lord Chancellor, he combines a role in leading the British judicial system with a prominent political position in the cabinet - yet he argues that the courts must exercise jurisdiction over the executive? And was the British proposal for imprisoning terrorist suspects for up to 80 days before court intervention took place, a proposal with which Lord Falconer was presumably content, so far removed from the principle of putting detainees beyond the reach of the law?

Motes and beams, I think...