The judges appear to have decided that the Home Office has the power to modify acts of parliament by publishing internal guidance.
The problem with the whole ‘Two Degrees of Humbert Humbert’ situation the Government now finds itself in is that it is so compelling an explanation for the downfall of a prime minister that Labour will convince itself that the rest of it didn’t matter.
Our deputy editor talks to Ayesha Hazarika about what comes after Sir Keir Starmer.
Were we the southern European country whose politics ours increasingly resembled, this is about the point where the European Central Bank would step in and appoint the prime minister for us.
Cathartic as the current circus might be, the root of this government’s problems does not lie in something so happily inapplicable to the Right as Peter Mandelson.
Labour likes to boast about falling NHS waiting lists, but the Health Service is actually treating fewer people.
Few of the revenants rallying behind Prosper UK’s grave-linen standard need much explaining. Most were backers or beneficiaries of David Cameron’s ‘modernisation’ efforts; they were, almost definitionally, the future. Now they’re not.
Freezing tax thresholds rather than adjusting them for inflation allows the Government to raise the de facto tax rate year after year whilst leaving the de jure rate the same; might it also lead the press to lose sight of the cause and effect?
Such an approach is unlikely to reap the electoral dividends they expect; but if it did, the only result would be to make Kemi Badenoch the next Sir Keir Starmer.
On the issues which are subject to the strongest pressures of public opinion – pensions, the NHS, taxation, crime, and immigration – the two major parties keep getting squeezed into broadly identical positions.
Defenders of the status quo on international law ought, you would think, to avoid making agreements which exacerbate the tension between that system and national democracy.
If it is in part judges taking a more expansive interpretation of their rights and responsibilities, that itself is downstream of politicians legislating in such a way as gives them more freedom to do so.
The President’s vision seems to be of an empire without the tedious long-term responsibilities that attend having one, including responsibilities to allies and collaborators.
Not only does it lean even further into the natural advantages as prospective candidates enjoyed by councillors, but it will in general select for MPs who conduct themselves like councillors regardless.
The proper place of polling is marketing, yet too often politicians defer to the public on granular policy questions.