There’s a widely held belief that, if these voting cases get to the Supreme Court, all the people Trump appointed will come good and just give him the decisions he needs to win the election. I think that’s quite a bad take, for two reasons: 1/4
First, the common strand between the people Trump appointed is that they oppose Supreme Court interference in state laws. Every decision they’re looking to reverse hinges on this “originalist” constitutional view that SCoTUS should stay out of state legislation. 2/4
Second, Trump has very little to offer them and very little to threaten them with. He’s appointed them. They’re there for life. In some cases, they have decades of a judicial career ahead of them. They will not trash their reputation to do Trump any favours. 3/4
Now, in any 50/50 calls that don’t involve obvious overreach, they may well flex the margins helpfully for Trump. But they won’t make ludicrous precedent, that goes against their core conservative ideology, for someone who will be gone in four years and maybe in three months. 4/4
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Once you're over the HOW-DARE-HE hump of "many people live on 1/20th of that" - a perfectly legitimate reaction, to be clear - a more interesting question emerges: Who would brief this story to the Times? 1/3
Seems too detailed to be fabricated; more likely it comes from a source genuinely close to the PM. It's definitely not succession planning. That ground is covered by the honourable discharge narrative "his health has not recovered" stories. This shows him in an awful light. 2/3
It's also not a "dead cat". Much of the media corps is already focused on his poor performance (full of 'insider' briefing). This story adds fuel to that fire rather than distracts from it. It's intended to wound him, to tip him over as he teeters.
The other dimension to the A-Levels fiasco is that it shows astoundingly poor political judgment. Even to the most casual observer it's been blindingly obvious for days that the gov't position was untenable. But - Classic Dom - his dislike of teachers made it a blind spot. 1/4
Choosing to grind it out has done the Johnson administration significant and lasting damage. Not only do they have every newspaper, usually cheer-leading for them, calling them "dunces", but they have managed to incite a backbench MP's rebellion, during recess - not easy! 2/4
Voting records show backbench rebellions are habit-forming. Once an MP has gone against the front bench, especially successfully, they're much more likely to do so again. Incidents like this, take the shine off No.10; they damage the gov't's glamour spell over their new MPs. 3/4
"Equally, the spreading of disinformation is not necessarily aimed at influencing any individual outcome; it can simply have broad objectives around creating an atmosphere of distrust or otherwise fracturing society."
This can result in a "general poisoning of the political narrative in the West by fomenting political extremism and ‘wedge issues’, and by the ‘astroturfing’ of Western public opinion; and general discrediting of the West."
If you're now wondering why such a simple rule should be so hopelessly confused, well, someone high up in the gov't was caught breaking it. So, just as with handshakes, lockdown, travel, and now masks, they'd rather reinvent the rule than admit a mistake.