Our new Attorney-General accuses judges of the "disfranchisement of Parliament". It's a bold appeal from someone who supported shutting down Parliament & locking it out of decision-making - until you release she has confused "Parlt" with "No. 10". [THREAD] conservativehome.com/platform/2020/…
2. Braverman rightly praises Parliament as "the only source of decisions which have legitimacy" on "matters like Brexit". Yet in both her examples of judicial encroachment (Prorogation & Art 50), the courts *restored* decision-making to Parliament after No 10 tried to remove it. 
3. When Braverman talks about the rights of Parliament, what she appears to mean is "the rights of the Executive": specifically, the right of a Prime Minister (perhaps elected by party activists) to shut Parliament down, ignore its legislation & exclude it from major decisions.
4. The threat to Parliament today doesn't come from judges. It comes from a govt that tried to shut Parliament down; threatened to ignore parliamentary legislation; refused to let Parlt scrutinise its Brexit deal; & accused a "dead Parliament" of defying "the will of the people".
5. If there's a threat to Parliament today, it comes from a govt that wants to send the House of Lords - the one chamber it doesn't already control - 200 miles away, so it can't hold ministers to account or participate properly in committee work. (*Much* easier than reforming it)
6. The biggest challenge to Braverman's "Diceyan notion of parliamentary supremacy" comes from party machines, bent on taking powers away from Parliament & handing them to their fee-paying members: whether that's the right to pick the prime minister or the right to declare war.
7. What Braverman is proposing is a massive power-grab by the Executive, in the name of restoring "Parliament". If anyone thinks that will "empower our people", they should read what Braverman says about the rights of the individual when they come into collision with the state.
8. Braverman complains that "even the most intricate relations between the state & individual can be questioned by judges". Of course they can: it is a fundamental principle that laws should be of general application & that courts - not politicians - apply them to specific cases.
9. Anyone who has experienced the calamitous incompetence of "fitness to work" assessments or who has read @ameliagentleman's book on the Windrush scandal - where citizens were imprisoned, impoverished & deported - knows the importance of legal checks on the actions of the state.
@ameliagentleman 10. Braverman invokes a "Diceyan notion of parliamentary supremacy", but Dicey wrote at a time when govts were regularly defeated in Parliament, when both Houses had a veto & party control was still loose. What Braverman envisages today is executive, not parliamentary, supremacy.
@ameliagentleman 11. It takes a lot of chutzpah for someone who supported shutting down Parlt, locking it out of policymaking & defying parliamentary legislation to boast of restoring parliamentary democracy. This is a power-grab by the Executive. For the sake of Parliament, we should push back.
