Finally someone talking about the real issues

Xx

Quite. Plus the reason for saying UK not Great Britain is because the latter does lot include N Ireland, a point which people like Frost have been keen to emphasise as integral to UK in Brexit context

So I find it strange that you have the intellectual confidence, not merely to predict the outcome, but to second guess the motivations and intellectual competence of those involved, and speculate on how they delivered their confidential advice to their clients

I don’t think this case is like that. I thought it was very likely to lose. I think the inevitable appeal will fail. But I know a very good silk who disagrees, and I have been wrong before

In the benefit cap case, a Supreme Court judge changed his mind between draft and final judgment. I still think he was wrong, but the courts have since doubled down on his approach. In the Rwanda case, the Div ct and LCJ were overruled by the CA majority and Supreme Court

For example, the majority view (not mine, and not universal) was that the prorogation case would fail. I have the impression that the gov side were very confident. It succeeded, and is now generally celebrated.

Of course one can make an informed assessment of how the court might assess that but it is very difficult not to be influenced by one’s own views, or role in the case. Further, judges themselves differ. Cases like this are unpredictable.

The law is not clear cut in a case like this. There were undoubtedly plausible legal arguments to make. Whether they would succeed turns not simply on the law but on the judge’s assessment of coherence of the policy.

I see that you are doubling down on your claim that you “understood” the law all along and that the most successful public lawyer of the last three decades did not (whilst also saying he was motivated by easy pay, which implies that he did understand the law but misled his clients)

This fundamentally misses the point. Pannick may advised that the case was weak, or that it was strong, perhaps misled by his own strength of feeling. Even he is not infallible. The one thing he plainly did not do is mislead his clients for an “easy payday”. That is what you suggested

Your remark is no different than a daily mail attack on the lawyers who brought the seminal brexit cases (successfully), or acted for shamin begum. As it happens there is an overlap. I really hope you will withdraw this

As you no doubt know, lawyers are not their clients. But they are also not the arguments they make in court, at least if they have advised their clients in good faith.

The lawyers involved have opportunities for far more lucrative work, so it is factually wrong. More importantly, the claim was bound to have been brought. Whatever your sympathies with the cause, many feel strongly about it. Courts are there to resolve such issues in accordance with the law

Personally I think the case was rightly dismissed and I have little sympathy with the cause. But as someone who generally admires your work I find the statement that this was all about lawyers who saw an easy payday extremely disappointing.

Salman Rushdie shares one of the worst horrors of his time under fatwa: getting Harold Pinter’s terrible poems faxed to him.

There are very few people in the United States with more power or a larger platform than Elon Musk and the President feels comfortable issuing what is close to an explicit threat against him on the record to an NBC reporter.

Who do you imagine he wouldn't feel comfortable threatening?

Also excellent use of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy to make a point