Liam in his first letter summarises his idea of an Iron Triangle of interests – the NIMBYs, the Commercial developers and the financiers – who are together the oligopoly that distorts the housing market.

It may be that he chooses not to make everyone his enemy and therefore pulls his punches in taking on the state per se.

Andrew Gimson reminds us that we are discussing “the artificial scarcity of building land created by the state.” Liam’s Iron Triangle has a fourth side. It is not that the politicians have taken their eyes off the ball and would correct the market if they should get round to it. The magnitude of the problem is only appreciated when we see that our government is in concert with the other accused. The planning system is entirely an instrument of our government, professionally and deliberately supporting and encouraging the faults that Liam details. Planning officers have a vested interest in the system as it is. They are collectively the prime source of advice by which the government views the problem. They have no interest in recommending any one of Liam’s suggestions or agreeing with his conclusions.

Since 1965U says he does not reply to trolls, may I mention that Zaph 239 is such a troll - and unimaginative and derivative at that.

We might note the inconsistency in his last two comments as he characterises Sunak both as a public school kid, incompetent and way out of his depth, and as a genuine threat to Boris.

I think we outside Whitehall are mistaken to dislike Bercow, as most of us purport to do. He was a legitimate part of the political scenery and, as Speaker, did a great deal to make parliament work better than before.

His pen-pictures of the leading Conservatives of his time are convincing. Remembering his extreme energy, stamina and wit, one can easily appreciate the fear and envy of his fellow politicians. He has been a giant pygmy in a community of pygmy normal-people. He might be right in his descriptions of B Johnson, while never understanding why we should be grateful to have him as our PM.

What unites us against him is that, as a resolute defender and promoter of the Commons, he was there when the last session ran amok. We can give him a kicking primarily because he finished on the losing side. If he and they had won, an awful parliamentary situation would have resulted and, if somehow he had remained in parliament, he would have had considerable authority in it.

We read that he was “foolishly” drawn to Enoch Powell. He might now find it foolish to have committed to the cul-de-sac role of Speaker. That is the end of public politics for him when he still has energy (and bile) to spare. The better reason to withhold from him a peerage is not to punish him for being who he is but to save the Lords from a lot of grief and envy if he should join their ranks.

If in 2009 he had kept his powder dry, he would have swapped the immediate status of Speaker for a future as rival for the real top job. He was presumably too impatient to wait that long. As prime minister he might convincingly have claimed the mantle of Disraeli while perhaps actually imitating Trump.

I am quite unable to tell the rights and wrongs of the legal issue – 1689 and the rest.

We can however, all of us, detect a political problem with how the Supreme Court made its decision.

We cannot doubt that, if there was a yet higher court, it would challenge the judgement because it overrode that of the divisional court “without engagement with their reasoning”. We might, with little hope, expect the Supreme Court to recall the case to review this aspect of their decision. Of course this unusual action would indicate a part admission of failure.

It would seem an unlikely move because there is an evident hubris problem. The unanimity of the prorogue decision is a most unnatural feature of the story. Lord Faulks tells us how, months later, the decision is being disputed. Why should none of the Supreme Court panel favour any of the alternate arguments he describes ? I say that the Court suffers, in the sense of the Metropolitan Police’s institutional racism, from an institutional arrogance. It seems more important to its members, under the leadership of Lady Hale, to present an united front on its own behalf than to resolve a constitutional problem – arbitrarily to make a law rather than to strengthen the existing law.

Behaviouralists will detect a fault in the practice of voting the court’s decision from the most junior member upwards. That is an institutional arrangement, inviting a herd decision. An honestly legal arrangement would have been to give the first vote to whatever contrarian had revealed himself – no doubt the Divisional Court provided much reasoning with which any such independent member might engage.

Liam Halligan is an excellent commentator, one of the two or three reasons why the Sunday Telegraph is the only newspaper I buy. He has naturally trailled his book in his Sunday article. His arguments are unanswerable.

Unanswerable because the challenge he offers our politicians are very, very daunting.

I am a serial property owner, both untaxed as a private owner and severely taxed as an owner of commercial property. In taxing commercial property, the government is extortionate. It taxes capital gains, refusing to recognise that a capital gain disappears if a property is sold to buy another equivalent property. It taxes business occupiers with its Business Rates, which it levies as (put crudely) a 50% tax on the putative rent – and commonly administers its assessments harshly, with little room for appeal.

Conservative policy makes virtually no provision for Monopoly. On this subject of property and housing, monopoly is the fundamental fault. The treasury of course taxes as a monopolist, inefficiently, unresponsively and unfairly. The local authorities that manage the planning regime act as monopolists in their own areas; their influence hugely distorts what should be a free market. Those parties that might represent a free market do no such thing; identified here as an oligopoly, they work comfortably with the planners to foil the interests of the housebuyer and all who would enter the property market anew.

I and my heirs and successors would lose hugely if this government does the right thing. Yet that right thing would be to break up the monopolies called Property Developers, forbid development for profit on NT/heritage/AONB land, permit development on virtually all other land (leaving the planners with little to do) and simplifying (so as to make a level field of) our property taxes.

The object must be to restore property values to the multiples of household incomes that prevailed twenty years ago. There are vastly more voters who would benefit from such an action than property owners (like me) who would lose. The socialist opposition will not recruit much useful support in opposing such a policy, startling as it would be.

Why is CCHQ to be moved ? What is the question that we are actually answering ?

As a guide to our thinking, how much of the following is currently true of the part of the CCHQ to be moved ?

(a) It consults one or a finite choice of the myriad London universities for ongoing data projects

(b) It influences the voters of its current London hinterland to support the Conservative cause

(c) It overtly supports known Conservative activists in that hinterland

(d) It clearly benefits from being at the centre of the national railway system for particular reasons

(e) It is closely involved in the political business of government and parliament.

I suspect that the senior No 10 source would give CCHQ low scores for its answers to these questions. The move is hoped to lead to higher scores in the new location. There is no good reason to see why that should happen. I therefore suspect that the lease envisaged for the new provincial office will have an early break-clause.

How important is the suggested University connection to be ?

If it is important, we should be discussing how much each candidate university would welcome us. There is a general understanding that the academic world thinks Tories are racist homophobes or nearly so.

Local to me I would suggest Exeter, a fine university whose undergraduates help with Conservative elections most years.

One writer on this thread rather forlornly suggested Milton Keynes. If he had made something of the nearby University of Buckingham he might have been onto something. Buckingham knew Margaret Thatcher as its most powerful launch sponsor and then for six years its chancellor. There is an historic relationship with the Institute of Economic Affairs and the current vice-chancellor is Sir Anthony Seldon, son of one of the IEA’s founders. And MK station puts it as close to London as could be wished.

Otherwise I doubt that a single displaced CCHQ would matter to its new neighbourhood – just another office block. The many great cities that have been proposed here might as well each have a mini-CCHQ, including (if you will excuse me) Exeter.

Mr Hughes does not say why he wants to project CCHQ out of London. I suggest there are two entirely different strategies that he might be pursuing.

As a MI6 deployment, he envisages the projection of a salaried workforce into the constituencies to carry out operations dictated by London. We on this thread have not yet suggested that we can afford more operatives than now constitute the ACMs that Elaine mentions. If these were to be what Mr Hughes is asking for, Elaine hints that they might have a quality problem. Cummings’ radical recruitment campaign would presumably deal with that.

What he does not even hint at is the gaping hole in modern Conservatism – the weakness in volunteer activity. The recent election shows that a strong London operation can work without the volunteers, thanks very much. That might be enough for Mr Hughes.

Still the strategic question is can the Red Wall be successfully replaced by sending brickies from London ? Or is it a better strategy to encourage and consolidate the local volunteers to penetrate the formerly-blue constituencies, even to the extent that they can afford constituency agents again ?

The value of the voluntary party is political. It is the only way to penetrate the local culture of a constituency. A strong representative constituency party is probably essential to repeat the Red Wall elections. Sending smartly suited persons out into the sticks will not do that and will doubtless irritate the local Conservatives they bump into.

I had not heard of Layla Moran until I learned she was “Pansexual”. Is it that she realised that Boris’ much-bruited social fecklessness had no effect on his electability ?
Many new voters might for themselves translate the expression as “Piping Hot”. Is she making a pitch for that entire demographic (in their dreams) next after Momentum ?

It is obvious that the FCO and DFiD operate in the same overseas nations. People do not appreciate how the targets for each organisation are pitched so differently. A good result for the FCO is to move the target nation or, at least, to influence the major figures in it in favour of British policies.

DFiD on the other hand is productive only when it develops tangible benefits for citizens of the target nations whom their governments are not sufficiently supporting. Often that activity is challenging for the host government.

In principle the two organisations at best operate separately and at worst are seriously at odds. How they will co-habit comfortably is hard to imagine. No doubt the sense of superiority, natural to the Foreign Office and its successors, will prevail. If after the merger we were to cut the much discussed 0.7 %, it would be because the FCO has been blatantly raiding it or simply using it to subsidise the big NGOs who misapply the money already.