We've discussed the separation from politics related to the choosing of justices in a previous thread, and I don't want to rehash that discussion, but given the political nature of the cases that are brought before the court, there are bound to be political implications in the choice. Not sure what to make of the fact that people aren't interested in who the judges are.
The reasons are
Britishness
History
Complex 'constitution'.
First off, we don't have a constitution that can consistently be agreed upon and the like in quite the same way as the US - meaning there are less armchair judges because even smart educated people are bamboozled much of the time. Historically these kinds of issues where dealt with in the House of Lords during the legislative process (who also had a sort of quasi-judicial role) or the Supreme Court. These days, our legislative and judicial branches are less smeared out around the edges, but that's very recent. The Executive is still smeary, but with less consequence.
There were historically 12 Supreme Court Judges, but there was a secondary pool that was used consisting of any senior judge and a tertiary pool that could in theory consist of any suitable retired judge with various conditions. They were obliged to retire at age 70 (this may have moved now I'm not sure), so you can imagine their careers are usually less lengthy than their US counterparts. Furthermore, Supreme Court cases are not heard/reviewed by all 12 judges. Typically a smaller subset between 3 and 9 is chosen. So any individual is less important to the system as a whole.
Also they are less powerful. They aren't the most senior representatives of a separate but equal branch of government. Parliamentary soveriegnty ensures this.
The judiciary selects new appointees (Again its actually complicated and strange) and the government accepts or rejects these. However, the government is only allowed to reject once and they get to ask the selection committee to 'reconsider' once (they can stick to their first choice if they want). After this, an appointee must be named.
Another reason is that they rebooted the system in 2009.
For the record here they are, along with their appointment date:
Lady Hale of Richmond
1 October 2009
Lord Mance
1 October 2009
Lord Kerr of Tonaghmore
1 October 2009
Lord Clarke of Stone-cum-Ebony
1 October 2009
Lord Wilson of Culworth
26 May 2011
Lord Sumption
11 January 2012
Lord Reed
6 February 2012
Lord Carnwath of Notting Hill
17 April 2012
Lord Neuberger of Abbotsbury
1 October 2012
Lord Hughes of Ombersley
9 April 2013
Lord Toulson
9 April 2013
Lord Hodge
1 October 2013
Overall nobody gets the sense that the government in power during an appointment has significant influence over the kinds of decisions that occur, nobody in Britain has spent the last two decades worrying about the fact that one of the judges was appointed by Thatcher because none of them are serving, and the influence any one of them has is so much smaller anyway.
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