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As a politics student in the late 1980s, the subject of the separation of powers in Western liberal democracies was imparted to eager students as an irrefutable and unbendable principle in the same way, I imagine, that the rules concerning the freezing point of water were taught to students of physics or the 'power rule for differentiation' was taught to maths undergraduates.

Separating the judiciary from the executive and legislature, we were taught, was a vital ingredient in providing a check on the potential excesses of power by a tyrannical individual or political organisation seeking to oppress or silence opponents.

The concept was simple: the executive drives the legal agenda, the legislature checks the legal agenda and the judiciary interprets it.

All three play a vital and dynamic role in the process of fair and proper law making - and, not just in the abstract - it was something that we have been able to witness in practice. Just look, or so we thought, at the American Model, where the Supreme Court and Congress have, over the decades, robustly applied the powers imparted in them by the American constitution to provide a healthy barrier to any demonstrations of presidential excess.

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The UK, though not quite so formulated as our American brethren, has also enjoyed a clear and cogent distinction between the roles played by the government, parliament and the judiciary.

In recent years, we've seen the UK Supreme Court judgements in a wide-range of profoundly important matters, ranging from the dispute about transgender women, to Boris Johnson's government's unlawful attempts to prorogue parliament; and, of course, in the decisions concerning the previous Conservative government's plans to deport illegal immigrants to Rwanda.

These rulings are never going to satisfy everyone, because, by definition, in a dispute there is always going to be the disappointed party who has their case dismissed - but, that is precisely why we have the process of judicial adjudication - and, anyone who has appeared in the Supreme Court, or read their Lordship's judgements will know that this is an austere and serious body populated by people of immense intellectual heft who, overwhelmingly, treat every case they are called upon to consider with great care and meticulous impartiality.

The idea that they are group of politically motivated liberals pursuing a political agenda designed to circumvent the will of the people, is absurd. Robert Jenrick - would be leader of the Conservative Party and Shadow Lord Chancellor's declaration that he would take back the power to appoint judges, leave the European Convention on Human Rights and scrap the Sentencing Council and place sentencing power into the hands of government Ministers, is a clear declaration that he intends to follow the lead of other populist right wing leaders around the world, by attempting to accumulate more power into the hands of the executive and emasculate the judiciary.

It's a brazen political move, fuelled by a populist desire to point the finger of blame for the failure of successive governments to improve the lives of ordinary people at a scapegoat who can't really publicly defend itself.

One only has to look at America under Donald Trump to see the direction of travel once a government, led by a narcissist with an authoritarian bent decides that he is more powerful than any court of law o...