Category: Constitutional and Legal History

The polity and the media

9th February 2022

There have been various communications revolutions in human history.

One, of course, is the development of human language – though we are still working out the extent to which this actually separates us from other animals capable of complex communications.

Another was the notion – which we appear not have had for most of the history of our species – that language can be written down and thereby stored or sent long distances.

This notion was instrumental in the development of more complex societies, as it meant for example than laws could be recorded and conveyed other than by oral tradition and transmission.

And about five hundred years ago, the development of movable type meant that things could get published and circulated on a scale that would not have been possible in days of manual reproduction of texts.

The most recent radical change in communication is one with which many reading this blog will be familiar.

In our lifetimes, when we were young, it was difficult-to-impossible to communicate with and publish to the world – unless you went through the gatekeepers of established newspapers, publishing houses or established broadcasters.

Yes: you could, perhaps, publish a vanity book, or pamphleteer outside McDonalds, or launch a pirate radio station in the North Sea.

But short of such extreme exertions, it was hard – as recently as the 1990s – to publish or broadcast whatever you wanted to the world.

And now, by reason of the internet and easy-to-use platforms, anyone with an online connection can, in principle, publish or broadcast on the widest possible scale.

We are now perhaps so familiar with this change that we forget how radical a shift this is.

And we are still reckoning the consequences.

One consequence is that our conventional ideas of politics and media are shifting – and we do not know for certain what will happen next.

The lack of gatekeepers on political discourse has a relationship with the populism-supporting figures such as Johnson and Trump.

Traditional mediating vehicles of transmission and participation – say, political parties and newspapers – are now in many respects redundant in these days of direct connections.

The law itself struggles to keep up – and our laws on social media are a hotchpotch of the unrealistic and outdated, but these laws also have no obvious alternative.

One hobgoblin of law and policy thinking is that nothing is new – we can see that the same will happen as before, as long as we know the right precedents.

How will our polity will be affected by these fundamental changes in politics, media and communications?

Will it mean a more liberal future?

Or a more authoritarian one?

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Rees-Mogg’s claim about us becoming a presidential system

26th January 2022

While we wait for the Sue Gray report, here is something said by the Leader of the House of Commons Jacob Rees-Mogg:

Rees-Mogg, of course, is the government minister who gave the Queen the unlawful advice on prorogation.

You would think that him now promoting a presidential system would be a further discourtesy to the Queen in her platinum jubilee year.

But even on the substance of the contention, it is historically and constitutionally illiterate.

In the last fifty years only Heath (1974), Callaghan (1979), Major (1997) and Brown (2010) have ceased to be Prime Minister by reason of a general election.

In contrast: Wilson (1976), Thatcher (1990), Blair (2007), Cameron (2016) and May (2019) were all replaced as Prime Minister without any general election.

This is because we have a parliamentary system and, given our uncodified constitution, there are many ways by which a Prime Minister can be replaced without a general election.

Going further back, one can also look at the stark examples of Asquith (1916), Chamberlain (1940) and Eden (1957) – who all were replaced after their respective military misadventures without any immediate general elections.

Rees-Mogg is correct that, in terms of political-media culture, Boris Johnson projects a presidential style.

But this should not be confused with the constitutional position.

There is nothing to prevent there being a new Prime Minister without a general election.

And, indeed, until and unless the Fixed-term Parliaments Act is repealed, any more immediate general election would in any case require a majority in the House of Commons to support it.

The most concerning thing about this, of course, is the authoritarian implications of Rees-Mogg’s contention – for it undermines parliamentary democracy.

And this authoritarianism, and subversion of parliamentary democracy, is part of a worrying trend.

Brace, brace.

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Boris Johnson is less interesting in and of himself, than for what his premiership tells us about United Kingdom constitution

11th December 2021

Many people – including you reading this post – will have strong opinions about the prime minister Boris Johnson.

And because he is such a distinctive politician, it is tempting to attribute all the current political woes to his actions and inactions.

To an extent that is a fair approach – for almost every political problem in the United Kingdom flows from a complete failure of political leadership.

Yet.

One should not confuse the opportunist for the opportunity.

Johnson does what he (thinks he) can get away with.

This is why Johnson is perhaps not so interesting for any individual qualities, but for what his premiership tells us about the United Kingdom constitution.

Here, what we are told are not just weaknesses of the constitution – but also its strengths.

For example, the status of the Good Friday Agreement as a core constitutional instrument should be without doubt.

It continues to shape and control what London governments can and cannot do in respect of Brexit and Northern Ireland.

The reported climb-down of Brexit minister David Frost over the supposed ‘red line’ of the European Court of Justice can be attributed to the value that Ireland and the United States place on what President Joseph Biden once pleasingly called ‘the Irish Accords’.

But.

Most of what Johnson’s premiership shows about the constitution of the United Kingdom is its weaknesses.

The ease, for example, with which a prime minister can evade and frustrate checks and balances on their office.

About how the only restraint on a governing party with a majority is that ancient one of Nemesis following on from Hubris.

And about how simple it is for determined government departments to remove rights from individuals.

As this blog has previously described: the government of the United Kingdom is currently pushing forward legislation that will enable its officials to kill people without legal consequences, to prohibit meaningful protest, and to summarily remove citizenship from you because of where your family is from.

These are all things which were possible before Johnson.

In 1929, a sitting Lord Chief Justice – Hewart – published The New Despotism warning of the implication of the power of a government that controlled the legislature, for it would tend “to subordinate Parliament, to evade the Courts, and to render the will, or the caprice, of the Executive unfettered and supreme”.

In 1976, the Tory (former and future) Lord Chancellor Lord Hailsham warned of an “elective dictatorship”.

It was only what Peter Hennessy called the ‘good chaps’ theory of government that stopped a government exploiting its powers to the full.

In a way, all that has happened is that we have now finally had a prime minister and a government that – to use a current phrase – ‘does not recognise’ self-restraint.

In a way, one cannot blame Johnson – for this what he does, and probably can do no other.

More culpable are the governing party’s members and MPs who voted for Johnson in the 2019 leadership election knowing full well the nature of him as a politician.

What the rest of us now get to see is what such a politician can show us about the constitution of the United Kingdom.

And it is not an especially pretty scene.

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Solving the problem of the House of Lords

13th November 2021

Over at the Financial Times, there is an interesting and informative piece about the hereditary peers in the house of lords.

And the point of the article is compelling: they make no sense.

The hereditary peers, as with the bishops of the established church of just one(!) of the four home nations, have no place in the legislature.

The only possible plausible argument for their presence is that, at least, there are members of that chamber that do not own their place to patronage.

But that is not much of an argument.

The biggest problem about the house of lords is not so much that of personnel but of function.

And unless we work out the proper function of the upper chamber then there can be no consensus on how to replace the hereditary peers and English Anglican bishops and on how to reform the house more generally.

What is the house of lords for?

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Some may aver that the chamber should have a representative function – perhaps of the home nations or the regions.

(This like the old notion that the house of lords was there to represent the agricultural/landed interests and church interests so as to balance the interests of those represented in the commons.)

Or its membership at least based on being elected by some different configuration than the house of commons.

Like the senate in the United States having two senators per state as opposed to the variable number of representatives per state in the other house of congress.

But this view raises the potential problem of rival mandates, with both houses claiming the legitimacy of the electorate.

In the United States that problem is avoided in part because of tradition, but also because the two houses have some different functions and are elected on separate cycles.

Such a balance would not be easy, at a stroke, to transplant into the United kingdom.

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Far more important than any representative function is, in my view, to retain and improve the revising and scrutiny role.

Here the house of lords, despite its lack of democratic legitimacy, serves the public interest in legislation often being better than it otherwise would be.

Placing the house of lords on some sort of democratic basis would risk losing this valuable role.

But other than through the patronage of the prime minister and others, how should members of this upper house be appointed?

On one hand they need to have the experience, ability and independence to say ‘no’ to a government so as to force reconsideration (though not to veto completely).

On the other hand, they need to have some legitimacy in a democratic society, and so whoever appoints them must have some direct relationship with the electorate.

Indeed, it may even be that there cannot be any reform of the house of lords until there is prior reform of the over-mighty house of commons.

And that in turn may need electoral reform and so on in an almost innate political regression.

Where would you start?

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So, back to the immediate question: how do we solve the problem of the house of lords?

There is no obvious solution – at least not one that does not risk losing what is valuable about a revising and scrutinising upper chamber.

And an unchecked house of commons is not an attractive prospect.

Like the crown, the constitutional significance of the house of lords may be not so much what powers it does have, but what powers it prevents others from having.

Getting rid of the hereditary peers and the bishops – although welcome – leaves the more general issue of what the house of lords is for unsolved.

Perhaps there is no practical and immediate solution.

And that is why in 2021 – 110 years after the temporary retention of peers in the 1911 Parliament Act – we still have this odd system.

(Emphasis added.)

Perhaps in another 110 years we will have a solution.

Or perhaps not.

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Budget special: the Fiscal State vs the Legal State

28th October 2021

Over at the London Review of Books there is a fascinating and informative review by Ferdinand Mount.

The review is of a book by Julian Hoppit about the history of tax and spending in the United Kingdom (which I have not yet read), but there are some thought-provoking points in Mount’s review.

The points in the review are, in effect, useful counter-balances to the usual critique of the United Kingdom constitution on blogs like this one and from other liberal constitutionalists.

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This usual critique is that there is an inherent illiberal problem with the constitution of the United Kingdom: that the doctrine of parliamentary supremacy creates a real scope for political dictatorship – even if this possibility has not (yet) been fully realised.

There is nothing to stop it, for there is nothing that can gainsay the legislative supremacy of parliament – and so an executive with an ascendancy in parliament faces no ultimate checks and balances.

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It was not always like this, of course.

In the early 1600s, the great lawyer Edward Coke averred that there were limits to what could be done by acts of parliament:

“for when an act of Parliament is against common right and reason, or repugnant, or impossible to be performed, the common law will control it, and adjudge such an Act to be void”.

But the political facts of the civil wars of the mid-1600s and of the deposition of a reigning monarch in 1688 meant that parliament became, in practice, legislatively omnipotent.

And this political reality was fixed into rigid ideological doctrine in the late 1800s by A. V. Dicey, whose articulation of the sovereignty of the crown-in-parliament has been orthodoxy ever since.

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As this doctrine of parliamentary supremacy took hold, there were voices of alarm.

In 1929, the sitting Lord Chief Justice – Hewart – published The New Despotism warning of the implication of the power of a government that controlled the legislature, for it would tend “to subordinate Parliament, to evade the Courts, and to render the will, or the caprice, of the Executive unfettered and supreme”.

In 1976, the Tory (former and future) Lord Chancellor Lord Hailsham warned of an “elective dictatorship”.

Both Hewart and Hailsham were experienced politicians as well as senior judges, and they could see how flimsy were the ultimate checks and balances on the executive.

All we had to rely on is what the constitutional historian Peter Hennessy has described as ‘the good chaps theory of government’.

This described how self-restraint was the primary reason why the executive did not carried away with its unchecked constitutional power.

And in an age of Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings (and of Donald Trump and Steve Bannon), this is not a comforting prospect.

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So how did we end up like this?

Why has the United Kingdom state almost sleepwalked into creating the conditions where raw executive power is effectively unchecked?

Mount’s review provides an interesting explanation.

The explanation is that this was not any conscious political intention, but the implication and by-product of the fiscal state.

Here Mount’s review starts with this wonderful anecdote:

“‘You were so generous, you British,’ Hans-Dietrich Genscher, West Germany’s perpetual foreign minister in the 1980s, once remarked: ‘You gave us a decentralised federal structure and a proportional system of election so that never again could we concentrate power at the centre, but you took neither of these for yourselves.’ Canadians and Australians could say much the same […]”

Mount then explains why we did not take the liberal constitutionalist course we imposed on others:

“The answer provided by one strong, perhaps dominant, tradition in English historiography is that monarchy, single rule, is a remarkably effective system, the secret of England’s survival and, for many centuries, the driving force behind the expansion of its power. Hence monarchy’s enduring popularity. […]

“Kings of England commanded a range of power and control over all subjects which outdistanced supposedly greater monarchs on the Continent.’

“This power consisted, above all, in the capacity to collect taxes. There were popular eruptions and, of course, exceptions (smuggling was one nagging drain on revenue), but between the poll tax riots of 1381 and the poll tax riots of 1990, what’s remarkable is the docility, by and large, with which the English paid their taxes, even when they reached monstrous levels to finance the Napoleonic Wars and the world wars of the 20th century.

“[…] after each convulsion – the Civil War, the Glorious Revolution, the Great Reform Bill, universal suffrage – the essential supremacy of the queen-in-Parliament (‘absolute omnipotence’, in Dicey’s phrase) re-emerged virtually unchanged.

“In this version of history, Parliament itself is reduced to a serviceable appendage for securing popular assent.”

(By the way, Mount’s review is more nuanced than the quotations above may indicate, so don’t take those quotations as the entirety of his stated position.)

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In other words: what makes no sense – and is akin to madness – from a liberal constitutionalist perspective, makes perfect sense from a fiscal perspective.

The executive’s abilities to impose taxation and to obtain revenue, and to have general consent in doing both, benefits greatly from the crown-in-parliament.

Translating finance bills in to acts of parliament is the thing.

And because of this, few front-rank politicians of any party would want to question, still less disturb this happy political situation – other than legal-political observers like Hewart and Hailsham.

Politicians and parties simply want the keys to this efficient fiscal-legal-political state.

And indeed a great deal of the United Kingdom constitution – and its history – is best understood from a fiscal perspective – including the respective powers of the two houses of parliament following the 1909-11 constitutional crisis.

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But.

What happens when the priorities of a government are not limited to the mundane business of tax-and-spend, but expand instead to wanting to use the executive in hyper-partisan exercises to stoke endless culture wars, and so on.

For not only do new ministers get they keys to the efficient fiscal-legal-political state, they also get the keys to unchecked executive power more generally.

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What is useful about being informed (or reminded) as to why the constitution of the United Kingdom came to be in its current arrangement is that at least it explains a thing which is a horror from a liberal constitutionalist perspective.

And it forces the question: can the constitution of the United Kingdom be reformed so as to become less of this liberal constitutionalist horror without losing the fiscal-legal-political efficiency that politicians (and – presumably – their voters) find so attractive and will not plausibly relinquish?

This is a difficult question.

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‘Parliamentary Sovereignty’ and ‘Parliamentary Supremacy’

24th October 2021

In the Attorney General’s interesting recent speech on judicial review, there is the following passage:

“But this flexibility, this resilience, should not obscure the central principle embedded in the very heart of our constitution, of fundamental importance since at least 1689.

“That principle is Parliamentary Sovereignty – it both underpins and anchors our constitutional settlement.

“I agree with the position as advanced by Lord Bingham in Jackson v Attorney General:

“‘The bedrock of the British constitution is, and in 1911 was, the supremacy of the Crown in Parliament . . . Then, as now, the Crown in Parliament was unconstrained by any entrenched or codified constitution. It could make or unmake any law it wished. Statutes, formally enacted as Acts of Parliament, properly interpreted, enjoyed the highest legal authority.'”

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The sharp-eyed among you may have noticed that the speech here switches between ‘parliamentary sovereignty’ and ‘the supremacy of the Crown in Parliament’.

Two s-words.

And you can see that the second s-word used is qualified by the term ‘Crown in Parliament’.

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Some use the two terms ‘parliamentary sovereignty’ and ‘parliamentary supremacy’ interchangeably, as constitutional synonyms.

I try to avoid doing this, as I think there is a distinction between the two.

This is because parliament, in and of itself, is not sovereign.

What may be sovereign is, as Lord Bingham was careful to say but the Attorney General was not, is ‘the Crown in Parliament’.

An Act of Parliament – following royal assent – is the supreme law of the land.

But nothing else done by parliament is ‘sovereign’.

For example: a parliamentary resolution or standing order binds only parliament (if at all)

And statutory instruments can be struck down by the courts as ultra vires the parent Act of Parliament.

Parliament is only sovereign when its primary legislation is endorsed by the crown – and not in respect of any other activity.

Even the limits of so-called parliamentary privilege are subject to judicial construction and interpretation.

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The former appeals judge Stephen Sedley avers – correctly in my view:

“It needs to be understood, because events in the earlier part of [the twentieth] century have obscured it, that there are within the separate powers of the modern British state two sovereignties, those of Parliament and the courts.”

Sedley in turn quotes Lord Bridge from a 1991 House of Lords Case, X Ltd v Morgan Grampian (Publishers) Ltd:

“The maintenance of the rule of law is in every way as important in a free society as the democratic franchise.

“In our society the rule of law rests upon twin foundations: the sovereignty of the Queen in Parliament in making the law and the sovereignty of the Queen’s courts in interpreting and applying the law.”

In other words: in interpreting and applying the law – but not in making or unmaking the law – the courts are sovereign too.

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This is not – or should not be – a surprise.

The sovereign entity in the United Kingdom is – as the label suggests – the monarch.

In law-making, the Crown and parliament are sovereign.

But in interpretation and application of the law, the Crown and the courts are sovereign.

Indeed, if you ever wander into a formal courtroom, you will often see the crown above the head of the judge.

(And just as those in the armed services salute the badge and not the person of a senior officer, when lawyers and others in court ‘all rise’ they are effectively paying respect to the source of the court’s power, and not to the person of the judge – or at least that is what you can tell yourself.)

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None of the above takes away from the legislative omnipotence of parliament in enacting primary legislation.

And it is certainly not an error to say ‘parliamentary sovereignty’ when one speaks of primary legislation.

But to do so may imply that parliament is the only form of state sovereignty in the United Kingdom (at least in England and Wales).

And it may imply that parliament is sovereign in some other respect than in enacting primary legislation.

Her Majesty’s Courts are, well, the Crown’s too.

And in interpretation and application of the law, the Crown and the courts are as sovereign as the Crown and parliament is in making and un-making the law.

So that is why – though it is only a personal preference – I tend to say ‘parliamentary supremacy’ – and not ‘parliamentary sovereignty’.

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Looking at today’s select committee hearing as a practical exercise in holding the foreign secretary to account

1st September 2021

The word ‘accountability’ in a political context means that a person with political power is required to give, well, an account of what they do and do not do.

This in turn means that exercises in political theatre – such as dramatic resignations and sackings, or prime minister’s questions, and so on – are not examples of political accountability.

Indeed, they can often be a substitute for the minister explaining about what happened on their watch.

And general elections are not an exercise in practical accountability: even taking the electoral system into account, parties campaign on broad manifestoes and are not obliged to fulfil and mandate if elected.

The nearest we have in the United Kingdom parliament at Westminster to the means of practical political accountability are select committee hearings.

Earlier today there was one such select committee hearing – the foreign affairs committee session with the foreign secretary Dominic Raab.

And to a certain extent this worked as an exercise in accountability: some further information was provided as to the circumstances of the evacuation from Afghanistan.

But rather than providing a full account of what happened, the foreign secretary often seemed uninformed and unaware, and he sought to hide behind long discursive answers unrelated to the questions asked.

Of course: by showing the vacuity of the foreign secretary the session was an exercise in political transparency, if not in accountability.

But there was nothing the committee could do – at least in the session – to require the foreign secretary to give a more complete and direct account of what happened.

And the session was not long – about an hour or so.

Yet this is the best we will get – the foreign secretary is now safe again from being probed closely as to what happened and did not happen.

We will return to ‘politics as normal’.

Perhaps one day, some earnest public inquiry will piece together a fuller account of what happened with Afghanistan.

And the time there is account, the relevant politicians will have long gone from being held to that account.

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Ministerial resignations: the ‘Estelle Morris resignation’ vs the ‘Lord Carrington resignation’

29th August 2021

A recent post on this blog set out why one should be sceptical of ministerial resignations – at least as a form of practical political accountability.

Many resignations – and sackings – are political theatre, and they are not instances of political accountability but substitutes for it.

The post averred that resignations still have their place, but that – all other things being equal – such resignations are not really about accountability.

No account ends up being given of how things went wrong, and why.

Instead there is a political CTL+X or CTL+Z and the political typing goes on as before.

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That said, one famous ministerial resignation was that of Lord Carrington in 1982.

In his letter of resignation, he stated:

‘The Argentine invasion of the Falkland Islands has led to strong criticism in Parliament and the press of the Government’s policy. In my view much of the criticism is unfounded, but I have been responsible for the conduct of the policy.

‘I think it right that I resign.

‘As you know, I have given long and careful thought to this. I warmly appreciate the kindness and support which you showed me on Saturday. But the fact remains that the invasion of the Falkland Islands has been a humiliating affront to this country.’

In his memoirs he stated:

‘The nation feels that there has been a disgrace. Someone must have been to blame. The disgrace must be purged. The person to purge it should be the minister in charge. That was me.’

He is generally regarded as having resigned for not having anticipated the Argentine invasion of the Falklands Islands.

Few historians now blame Carrington – and indeed the minister more responsible for signalling to Argentina that the United Kingdom may have a weak resolve to defending the Falkland Islands was the defence secretary, who stayed in his job.

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Another resignation, though now less famous, was that of Estelle Morris as education secretary in 2002 – and it one of the most remarkable and refreshing political resignations of modern times.

Her reasoning was startlingly frank:

‘I’m good at dealing with the issues and in communicating to the teaching profession. I am less good at strategic management of a huge department and I am not good at dealing with the modern media. All this has meant that with some of the recent situations I have been involved in, I have not felt I have been as effective as I should be…’

She resigned because she was not in the right job, and she said so.

And good on her – and it would be better if more people with political power were so candid.

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The current foreign secretary Dominic Raab is criticised in today’s press for failures to engage properly with the issue Afghanistan in the run up to this month’s evacuation.

In particular:

This is a serious charge – perhaps almost the most serious charge that could be made against a foreign secretary.

This is not just getting a foreign policy issue wrong – say, like what was alleged against Carrington – but not even engaging with it in the first place.

This is foreign policy that is not even wrong, in the words from another context of Wolfgang Pauli.

If the charge is correct then Raab cannot even give an account of what he did wrong and why made those errors, as he did not do anything.

He cannot offer any account, for there is no account to be given.

And so there cannot – literally – be accountability.

If he were to now resign in these circumstances, it should be more of an Estelle Morris resignation than a Lord Carrington resignation.

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And just as resignations and sackings are substitutes (usually) for accountability, another things is stark.

If the newspaper report is accurate, being ‘totally focused on Brexit’ is a substitute for good policy and government.

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The ‘benefit of hindsight’ is becoming the modern ‘benefit of clergy’ – politics, accountability and rhetoric

25th August 2021

There are various means by which those with political power can evade accountability for what they do and do not do.

(By ‘accountability’ I mean those with political power being obliged to give an account for what they have done and not done.)

One means is by minimising or removing any formal checks and balances within our constitutional arrangements – answering to parliament, the independence of our courts, the effectiveness of judicial review, an impartial civil service, public service broadcasting and so on.

A second means is to disregard informal and non-legal self-restraints within the constitution – to ignore the ‘good chaps’ theory of the constitution, where so much depends on the willing observance of unenforceable conventions and rules of procedure.

A third means is to ensure that any special method of accountability – such as a public inquiry – is as delayed or limited as possible, if it takes place at all – and if it does take place, the ‘lessons learned’ are for another generation of politicians.

And a fourth is by means of rhetoric.

In particular, the increasingly regular occurrence of ministers and political appointees invoking ‘hindsight’.

In the commons, the prime minister responds to explanations of how he could have dealt with foreseeable things in a timely manner – regarding Brexit and other things – with the jibe ‘Captain Hindsight’.

The politically appointed head of the national health service test and trace programme told a parliamentary committee, with a straight face:

‘With the benefit of hindsight the balance between the supply and the demand forecast wasn’t right. Clearly that is true.’

And, now with Afghanistan, we have the foreign secretary explaining why he carried on taking a holiday during the fall of Kabul:

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Brexit.

COVID-19.

Afghanistan.

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In most, if not all, of these situations the potential problems were bleedingly obvious in real-time, at the time.

What was required was not hindsight but foresight.

But we now have a group of politicians who have realised they can benefit from a special form of political herd immunity by deriding criticism as ‘hindsight’.

And this, in turn, provides them with a licence to not properly think things through at the time and to take decisions (or not take decisions) for reasons of perceived political expediency.

For they know, in the back of their minds, that when things go wrong all they have to say to critics:

‘…with the benefit of hindsight’.

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A healthy polity does not greatly depend on formal constitutional instruments – and legalistic words in a document can only make so much difference.

A healthy polity instead depends on issues that can be characterised as ‘cultural’ as well as constitutional – the general sense of what those with political power can get away with.

And, as the very stuff of a political culture is largely words, symbols and communication, when that culture is debased then it becomes significantly more difficult to hold ministers to account.

The ‘benefit of hindsight’ is becoming the modern ‘benefit of clergy’.

If this trend continues, then our polity will be the worse for for it.

And this will not only be obvious with…

…well, hindsight.

**

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They are proclaiming Magna Carta at Edinburgh Castle

 

19th August 2021

Time for some summer fringe fun from Edinburgh (from my Twitter feed) – but also with a serious point at the end.

https://twitter.com/davidallengreen/status/1427893171984470018

https://twitter.com/davidallengreen/status/1427895325382135812

[Sadly the link in the above tweet has now been deleted.]

https://twitter.com/davidallengreen/status/1427897234360881154

https://twitter.com/davidallengreen/status/1427898649305128961

https://twitter.com/davidallengreen/status/1427899636006670339

https://twitter.com/davidallengreen/status/1427909500179296263

https://twitter.com/davidallengreen/status/1427910530455457792

https://twitter.com/davidallengreen/status/1427911683918503936

https://twitter.com/davidallengreen/status/1427912438314373124

**

Thank you for reading.

Please support this liberal and constitutionalist blog – and please do not assume it can keep going without your support.

If you value this daily, free-to-read and independent legal and policy commentary for you and others please do support through the Paypal box above, or become a Patreon subscriber.

***

You can subscribe for each post to be sent by email at the subscription box above (on an internet browser) or on a pulldown list (on mobile).

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Comments Policy

This blog enjoys a high standard of comments, many of which are better and more interesting than the posts.

Comments are welcome, but they are pre-moderated.

Comments will not be published if irksome.