And out the other side?

The possible return of serious people doing serious things in law and policy

There is a sub-genre of fantasy literature which can be called the “portal” story.

Here someone goes through a portal into a world similar to but also profoundly different from our own.

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Since around 2015 we have in the United Kingdom been on our own political portal (mis)adventure.

We have collectively gone through the wardrobe, over the rainbow, down the rabbit hole, and past the second star on the right.

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But now we may be emerging from our disconcerting expedition.

Over at the department of culture, the new secretary of state announces the end of the “culture wars”.

Obviously such a unilateral declaration of maturity and sanity can only have so much purchase. There is a great deal of what may be called the media-political complex which is wedded to various divisive talking points, especially given falling circulations and memberships. But for ministers to be moving on from such relentless infantilism is a start.

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And in the province of law and policy - the staple of this Substack - there seems to be a significant change.

Across the Ministry of Justice and the law officers' department there have been impressive appointments.

We have a heavyweight KC as Attorney-General - the government’s chief legal adviser.

His deputy, the Solicitor-General, is an experienced and highly regarded environmental and planning lawyer, which suggests that it may not only be activists who will be taking a strategic view of what can be done with the law.

And there is the refreshing appointment of James Timpson as Prisons Minister.

On the face of it, these look like serious people capable of doing serious things.

If so, this would be marked contrast to the antics of various law officers and justice ministers over the last few years, from banning books in prisons to tweeting during live police investigations, and from performative dud legislation to leaking government legal advice.

Fortunately for the rest of us, the former governing party, now reduced to a rump barmy army in opposition, are embarking on their own awfully big adventure - and their screaming and hysterics should become fainter and fainter as their asteroid hurtles from the orbit of power for a while.

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One cannot be certain that things back on Earth will change, and so it is important not to get ahead of ourselves: the new ministers may disappoint us just as their predecessors did - even if the disappointments will be of a different kind.

But that said, it is going to be strange to comment on a Ministry of Justice and the law officers when they are taking their tasks seriously.

To adapt the words of the eminent jurist Dorothy Gale:

“Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Oz anymore.”