"But he does want very much to be a great Lord Chancellor, responsible for a major constitutional re-settlement and a genuine reform of the justice system."As for his values, what do those who know him believe them to be? Many scratch their heads as if the subject had never cropped up in 30 years of friendship or acquaintance. I think that New Labour is a natural development of socialist tradition." His political motivation is, he says, "to make the lives of ordinary people better". When I asked Lord Irvine whether he thinks of himself as a socialist, there was a full 12-second pause before he replied: "I attach very little importance to labels but to the extent that it has a contemporary meaning, not in the Marxist Leninist sense, but in the British tradition, then yes. "Derry's politics are to be loyal to the leader of the Labour Party," says one. Wright also got into trouble with Irvine when, taking advantage of a "freedom to speak" clause agreed at the time of his appointment, he took a swipe at the flummery of the monarchy and the rules for ministers taking their spouses on trips abroad - this latter intervention sensitively timed in that Lord and Lady Irvine had just returned from a trip to the Caribbean."The thing about Derry is that he says what he thinks and doesn't trim the advice he gives," says Lord Falconer. He was consistently advised against this type of reaction not only by Thompson, but also by Geoff Hoon, his junior minister, and Tony Wright, the clever New Labour MP who was appointed Irvine's Parliamentary Private Secretary after the election, but who quietly slipped out of the job a couple of weeks ago a frustrated man, having been blocked from combining the role of special adviser and PPS originally intended. What Irvine should do is to relax and be himself in public - but that is not advice likely to appeal to those in Downing Street paid to deliver still waters.He is also, as you might expect of a lawyer, quick to sound litigious.

They're not good jokes, but it' s a start," says one legal journalist.Whether Lord Irvine can learn to love the media is, however, another matter. Intensely sensitive to criticism, he has struggled to find the right language to talk to journalists and, as a result, struggles to find a convincing register with the people journalists serve - namely the general public. The first invitation to a briefing for legal correspondents was accompanied by a written note, laying down restrictions on the questions that would be entertained, and his lengthy screeds of complaint to editors have chiefly been regarded as comic. Among his early conflicts with his press adviser Sheila Thompson was his refusal to sit at the same table as legal journalists when briefing them - something he said he had been advised upon by Alastair Campbell, which would be odd, since the Prime Minister briefs everybody from a sofa, if not from a garden chair. "It must be him who has been reading Derry's speeches and taking out the more pompous passages. He's also started making self-deprecating remarks and jokes about Wolsey.

Those who have been verbally pummelled by Irvine in court or in cabinet committee would probably pay a week's salary to witness him in diffident mode.Others note that although he set out breathing fire and brimstone about reining in the fat cat legal aid lawyers and bouncing them into an American- style conditional fee (no win/no fee) system, his plans are being significantly re-shaped following consultation - leading to a revised charge, that the reforms will not achieve worthwhile savings and so are not themselves worthwhile. Lord Irvine's response to this is to agree that there will be no financial savings, but that "the budget will be refocused in the direction of greatest need." He will set out his detailed thoughts on his proposed community-based legal service shortly.This moderation of tone and a sense that he needs to build a constituency for his reforms is credited by many observers to the more emollient style of Garry Hart. Because of his heavy workload, he has sat in judgment as a Law Lord only once and once in Privy Council, and is reported by those who witnessed the events to have been "pretty diffident" - perhaps reflecting his lack of experience as a judge, or even of criminal matters. I was parading my purism by criticising a decision of the courts which was hostile to the outgoing Government." He would not, he added, offer such a view if a similar case were to arise during his tenure as Lord Chancellor - as opposed to discussing a historic case.Those who know Lord Irvine well say that he is very unlikely indeed to court disfavour among the judges or the legal profession, not least because despite his appearance of overwhelming self-confidence he is aware of the limited range of his own legal experience. To the fury of Margaret Thatcher, the court ruled that the grant was unlawful in that it did not involve "sound development". Lord Irvine told his Hong Kong audience that "it is this type of judicial activism which begins to blur the boundary between appeal and review, thereby undermining the constitutional foundations on which the courts' supervisory jurisdiction rests."This week Lord Irvine seemed surprised that I read these remarks as an indication of how the combined weight of his powers might be used to apply pressure to judges, replying that in making this particular speech, "I was wearing my legal hat. I was using that as an example - the only modern example I could think of - where arguably the judges had gone further than was legitimate in construing a statute and therefore substituting their judgments for the judgment of the executive.