Supreme Court Judge Lord Sumption has provoked outrage in the media by denouncing positive discrimination for female candidates for the judiciary.

Back in 2012 Sumption kicked off a lecture with the words "in modern Britain, the fastest way to make enemies is to deliver a public lecture about judicial diversity". And he's now proved his own theory in an interview with the Evening Standard. In the interview, Sumption laid the blame for gender imbalance in the judiciary squarely on the difficulty of balancing the punishing workload of a successful QC with a normal family life. He believes the result is fewer women at the top of the bar (and at City law firms) and so a smaller pool from which to fish for female judicial talent. And while Sumption reckons the problem will take 50 years to resolve, he doesn't believe positive discrimination in the meantime is the answer.

In the uproar that followed, no one disagreed more stridently than Charlotte Proudman, the barrister who recently shamed a City partner for saying that he liked her photo, and who now seems to be building a media career out of the incident. She said in the Guardian that Sumption typified the profession's institutionalised sexism, and that his comments "encapsulate his deepest fears that power vested in the old boys’ network could come under siege". She also lamented the fact that no one had accused him of "hating women" - but failed to point out that he looks just like Rowley Birkin QC.

Rowley Sumption

Jonathan Birkin

You never see them in the same room

For such a clever chap Sumption seems unwise to have urged women to be "patient", a patronising pat on the head that could have been designed to infuriate all women at the bar. And Proudman seems keen to make the most of her new media profile after various solicitors said they'd no longer instruct her.

This one looks set to run and run.