Tim Buley KC

Conor Gearty was, without hesitation, the best academic writer I’ve read. He was also a thoroughly decent and kind human being who fearlessly used his position speak truth to power.
Conor did law, politics and academia the right way and he will be sorely missed.
Ní bheidh a leithéid arís ann.

Social media is full of one set of people shouting that Angela Rayner is an evil tax evader who deserves jail, and another set shouting she's an innocent wrongly accused.

Real life is more boring than that.

A short piece in today's Times.

Finally someone talking about the real issues

Chart showing Estimated annual cost and reduction in the number of children in relative poverty after housing costs, various two-child limit options, 2029-30: UK

The most cost-effective way to reduce child poverty is to abolish the two-child limit, which would cost £7,480 per child lifted out of poverty.

If it is not scrapped then one-in-three children will be in poverty by 2029-39, including half of children in large families 👉 buff.ly/oiV5Re2

One thing to criticise the legal reasoning in a judgment, but the additional, evidence-free suggestion that the judges are Russian stooges is silly stuff

Xx

Welfare bill will now lift 50,000 out of poverty after U-turns, assessment finds Revised bill passed after UK government rowed back on cuts will mean fewer rather than more people in relative poverty in 2030

Good news - and biggest impact (surprisingly) is on child poverty.

But still small compared to the two-child benefit cap - remains essential to remove that if government is to be serious about child poverty

www.theguardian.com/society/2025...

Yeah that's the way to get MPs back onside...

FFS

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.

If Harold had your fax number these poems would arrive from time to time and needed to be praised as soon as possible. One of the poems was named Len Hutton' after the great England batsman. I saw Len Hutton in his prime / Another time / Another time. That was it. Harold's great friend and fellow playwright Simon Gray neglected to comment on this piece and Harold called him up to reproach him. 'I'm sorry, Harold,' Simon said. 'I haven't had time to finish it. Mr Pinter didn't see the joke.

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

Trump Escalates Musk Feud By Nuking Mars WASHINGTON—After days of listening to the tech billionaire criticize his ‘Big Beautiful Bill,’ President Donald Trump escalated his feud with Elon Musk Friday by nuking Mars. “Elon was ‘wearing thin,’...

Trump Escalates Musk Feud By Nuking Mars

A bad President, for instance, has the power to do what? What can he not do? If he wanted to revolutionize this government, he could easily do it with this ponderous power; it would be an auxiliary power. He could cry “havoc, and let slip the dogs of war,”29 and say to the conspirators: “I am with you. If you succeed, all is well. If you fail, I will interpose the shield of my pardon, and you are safe. If your property is taken away from you by Congress, I will pardon and restore your property. Go on and revolutionize the government; I will stand by you.” The bad man will say or might say this. I am not sure but we have got a man now who comes very near saying it. Let us have done with this pardoning power. We have had enough of this. Pardoning! How inexpressibly base have been the uses made by this power—this beneficent power. It has been that with which a treacherous President has trafficked. He has made it the means of securing adherents to himself instead of securing allegiance to the government.

very fun to read frederick douglass accurately describe the problem with the pardon power in 1867

No, the Inns of Court are not biased against white barristers A quick one today, addressing a misnomer which began life as a conspiracy theory on Twitter, and this week found itself put forward as a news item by Kevin O’Sullivan and Isabel Oakeshott on “TalkT…

In response to some recent idiocy:

NEW BLOGPOST: No, the Inns of Court are not biased against white barristers

thesecretbarrister.com/2025/05/18/n...

Found in my 4 year old son’s science kit

My view is that I should factor that in but it is only significant when giving very high or low prospects. It is one of the reasons why one very rarely says 90 or 100 percent even on cases with no live evidence.