For the record, apropos the Government's plans to overturn court judgments, it's hard to say they're a constitutional outrage until you know what they are. We don't - and nor it seems does Government.
This stuff – the proper relationship between what lawyers call the Executive (and normal people call Ministers) and the judiciary – is quite delicate. Judges have always told Ministers they can’t do something - in the public law sphere - and Ministers have always hated it.
If the plans are for Ministers to overturn judicial rulings they don't like by going to Parliament and asking it to change the law that judges found Ministers broke, that's basically fine (examined through a formal constitutional law lens, at any rate).
If the plans are for Ministers to have some power to overturn judicial rulings without going through Parliament that's (again, examined through a formal constitutional law lens) pretty offensive and profoundly undermines the supremacy of Parliament and the rule of law.
Standing back from the detail, a few points.

First, it is significant that Ministers have briefed this out before it knows what it wants to do. I can't see any reason why they would do this otherwise than to bully judges - and encourage useful idiots to attack @GoodLawProject.
Second, the formal constitutional law lens is only useful insofar as Ministers respect Parliament. Instead they demonstrate contempt for it - prorogation, threats to remove constituency funding, growth in delegated legislation, short timetables for vital legislation, and so on.
Third, the effect of these measures is to cause the power that is held by our only national democratic body to leach out of Parliament and into the Executive and so those two conceptions (up thread) of what Ministers might be up to blend into one.
I keep saying it but as the Government's political chickens start to come home to roost, things are going to get very ugly indeed. And what they are doing at the moment is (I think) preparing for that world with new laws on protests, voter id, election law, judicial review, etc.
I'm not going to stop and @GoodLawProject is not going to stop. But I can't pretend not to be deeply worried about what the future holds.

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More from @JolyonMaugham

6 Dec
This year: four judgments, four wins.
"If only people didn't sue Government for breaking the law Government wouldn't need to clamp down on judges" is quite a take, even by Dan's standards.
Could you tell me, @DPJHodges, whether your tweet is parroting a line briefed out by Government comms - SpAds or Press Officers - because I've heard it from several right-wing Government-friendly journalists?
Read 5 tweets
1 Dec
Remember the story of Matt Hancock and Alex Bourne, the publican turned medical equipmemt supplier, a photo of whose pub Mr Hancock kept on his office wall?
Well yesterday, Mr Hancock went on the attack. He said Alex Bourne "never got a contract from the Government" and that it was a "fabrication pushed by the Labour Party" and "a load of rubbish".
Well, in a funny sort of way Hancock is telling the truth. If you look for contracts that Bourne's company, Hinpack, won you won't find any.
Read 13 tweets
28 Nov
What this note seems say is, if you have criticised Government policy, you can't be invited to speak to civil servants. In other words, only those who haven't criticised Government policy get invited. And this - which is inimical to neutrality - is presented as retaining it.
The memo isn't fully reported but it seems to say: if you criticise Government policy in area X, you are banned from speaking in area Y. So a black scientist who says (e.g.) 'Government is wrong to deny institutional racism exists' can't speak on her scientific expertise.
It's the conduct of a Government fearful of challenge, that responds to it by trying to silence the speaker rather than meeting the challenge, and that wields the power of State patronage to punish those who speak against the Government.
Read 5 tweets
26 Nov
🧵Back in March 2020, the Government asked councils to house all street homeless people to protect them from the pandemic. It was an unprecedented move which rightly safeguarded thousands of vulnerable people from life on the streets as Covid took hold @LondonersLondon [1/4]
Paul Atherton @LondonersLondon was one of many who benefitted from the move. He went from sleeping rough in Heathrow to staying in a hotel apartment, where he could shower, cook healthy meals and rest when his Chronic Fatigue Syndrome flared up [2/4] thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2020-0…
But by July, he had been turfed out and was facing the prospect of sleeping rough once again. Now, over a year later, the ‘Everyone In’ scheme looks like a missed opportunity to eradicate rough sleeping for good [3/4]
Read 5 tweets
26 Nov
"The reports suggest a very serious misuse of public money, in the realms of criminal conduct, by or for the Prime Minister. We will not stand by and watch." glplive.org/no-more-threats
"Threatening to cut off funding for local communities to force MPs to vote to save a disgraced MP reveals the truth behind what the Government likes to style as ‘levelling up’. As always, it’s people from hard-up communities who end up paying the price." glplive.org/constituency-f…
Amusingly, the personal hostility in this piece (by @PaulGoodmanCH) renders more reliable his account of what happened when a gun was held to the heads of Tory backbenchers to force them to vote to exonerate sleaze. We'll certainly adduce it as evidence. conservativehome.com/leftwatch/2021…
Read 4 tweets
25 Nov
Our so-called constitution offers no protection, none, against a removal of our human rights. And anyone who thinks this Government will stop at this is, I am afraid to say, a wild optimist or a fool. inews.co.uk/opinion/priti-…
Things will get very ugly. This Government abuses its power. It accepts no challenge. It has no morality. It has only self-interest. Buckle up.
Our @BarbzDavi reminds me of what the Greenham Common women achieved. Hard to imagine their protest would be permitted under this Government. bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0…
Read 4 tweets

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