Never mind Labour’s promise not to raise income tax, national insurance or VAT – the party will soon be jacking up taxes for everyone. That sums up the Conservatives’ attack line for this election campaign. But in focusing almost wholly on tax, the Tories are missing what threatens to become the real theme of a Keir Starmer government: the eclipse of elected politicians and the continued draining away of power to the courts.

The Labour leader effectively decriminalised assisted dying in 2009, before he was even an MP

According to polls, Labour is heading for a majority of more than 200. That in itself would clip the wings of the House of Commons. Opposition parties will be too weak to challenge a Starmer government, while Labour’s backbenchers will have virtually no power either, as it would take too many of them to threaten Labour’s majority. But who needs large numbers of parliamentary bills when – as Labour showed last time it was in government – the left can achieve what it wants by passing overarching pieces of legislation and relying on judicial activism to do the rest.

Take migration. One of the reasons support for the Tories has collapsed is its very visible failures to ‘stop the boats’ and curb illegal migration. That was not for want of trying. We have had the Rwanda Bill, as well as numerous failed deals with France. But every initiative has been usurped by a combination of the European Convention on Human Rights and Britain’s own Human Rights Act, which incorporated the former into UK domestic law. Both act as a permanent legal infrastructure capable of frustrating the will of the elected House of Commons. On migration, the Blair government has effectively been continuing to rule from beyond the political grave.

No one knows better than Starmer how small tweaks by lawyers can effectively change the law with hardly anyone being aware of it. He is now promising a Commons vote on assisted dying – which, in keeping with past practice, will presumably be left as a matter of conscience to individual MPs. When the subject was debated in the Commons in 2015, a bill to legalise assisted dying was defeated by 330 to 118 – with Starmer voting in favour. But what did that count for when he had personally effectively decriminalised assisted dying in Britain 15 years ago, before he was even an MP? As Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) in 2009 he issued guidelines which recommended that friends and relatives would not be prosecuted for helping the terminally ill to commit suicide so long as it was the intention of the person to take their life and that they had merely assisted, not encouraged the act. This was following........

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