Head of Legal earlier in the week deals with the Law Lords’ judgement in the case of R (Gentle) v Prime Minister and Others. It wasn’t the judgement which caught my eye, but one of the comments in which Peter Hargreaves observes:

If we had a true Parliament instead of a House of Muppets controlled by the executive then we would have the inquiry. Under our constitution it is supposed to be Parliament which holds the executive to account but as Lord Denning once said – “Legal theory does not march hand in hand with political reality” – [Attorney-General v Blackburn 1971]. The reality is that the executive controls Parliament.

As usual the late lamented Lord Denning hit the nail on the head so many years ago; he should be living yet!