This is a weekly thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or IR history. I usually start off with coverage of some current events from a mix of countries I follow personally and countries I think the forum lives in or might be interested in. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.
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Notes -
The Supreme Court was created by Tony Blair to take over from the original last court of appeal, which was essentially parliament itself. Specifically, the court was staffed by the Law Lords, who were part of the House of Lords and therefore associated with legislation). Ostensibly because it was inappropriate to have the highest court of appeal be part of the government.
To let my prejudices take over, it was a classic piece of Blairism in that it was constitutional change for the sake of change. He had an obsession with being 'modern', so he made hamfisted changes to the country in ways that now can't be stopped - making the Bank of England independent, devolving government in Scotland, Wales and NI, the creation of hate crimes and 'protected characteristics', mass immigration, and trying to splice Napoleonic European rights law into British Common Law. The last of those is responsible for the majority of problems, as it destroys the load-bearing principle that Parliament is sovereign and pretty much all of our constitution with it. This is creating all the problems re: immigration.
"Giving a title to a court that includes the adjective ‘supreme’ – and putting no higher domestic judicatory above it – might be thought to be, at the very least, a temptation to judicial overreach."
https://policyexchange.org.uk/blogs/the-difference-leaving-the-house-of-lords-has-made/
There is an increasingly strong suspicion that Rishi Sunak is pro-immigration but has to be publicly against it, so he's pushing 'solutions' that he knows will get tied up in legal appeal until after the election. Certainly, he's dead-set against actually reducing our commitments to international human rights law, which is what Jenrick is advocating, and it's not realistically possible to do anything about immigration without doing so.
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