The Government’s best quality is its ineptitude. If it were more competent, it could do permanent damage to this country. But it isn’t competent, so we at least have some defence.

This was a glorious week for British civil liberties. And that had nothing to do with what the Government did. It was because it has been so cack-handed, so comically amateurish, that its draconian attack on protestors has been defeated in court.

The case was brought by the civil rights group Liberty, with assistance from the Good Law Project. It didn’t make the news, really. It hinged on technical matters of law. But it’s hard to think of a better encapsulation of our particular period of political life – a crude and clumsy Government handing extraordinary powers to itself and the police, subverting parliament and attacking demonstrators, only to trip over its own shoelaces.

Here’s what happened. Around this time last year, as i reported at the time, the Government did something extraordinary. It tried to subvert the right to protest without parliamentary approval.

It all hinged on the words “serious disruption”. According to the Public Order Act 1986, this is the trigger for when police can intervene and impose conditions on a protest, including shutting it down altogether. A generation later, the Government had a bright idea. The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 allowed the home secretary to amend the meaning of “serious disruption” using a statutory........

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