Boris Johnson takes on the judges

IN SEPTEMBER LAST year, when the Supreme Court overruled a government attempt to suspend Parliament during the Brexit negotiations, Boris Johnson called the decision “unusual”, but a source from Number 10 was franker: the court had made “a serious mistake in extending its reach into these political matters”. Payback, it seems, is coming. Mr Johnson has appointed a new attorney-general, Suella Braverman, who has made clear her enthusiasm for curbing the judiciary’s power (see ).That the power of judges has grown in the past few decades is not in doubt. This is the consequence of three factors: the public’s growing enthusiasm for taking the government to court through judicial review; the spread of law to corners of people’s lives into which it did not previously much intrude (such as family life and the environment); and the Blair government’s espousal of constitutional reform.