Weak Reed

In keeping with Team Starmer's programme of change, the environment secretary has continued fighting a Conservative legal case against cleaning up a river, and has now lost it. An anglers' association took the Government and the Environment Agency to court after a decade in the usual channels, and thereby induced the Government to produce a plan which may have erred a little too much on the side of administrative practicality by, for example, omitting to inconvenience the local sewage pumpers by compelling them to limit their discharges. A high court enemy of the people found that the Government had shown an unlawful degree of flexibility by not specifying any concrete measures to achieve legally binding targets, and Team Starmer's commitment to Conservative policy has ensured Labour's ownership of the subsequent humiliation in the appeal court.