LONDON — Nobody likes a backseat driver. But what if the person trying to grab the wheel is a former prime minister? Britain has cycled through a stack of leaders in the past decade, leaving it with an unprecedented eight former PMs still standing — and frequently commenting on the person doing their old job. Just this weekend, Kemi Badenoch, leader of Britain’s battered Conservative Party, tried to distance herself from the troubled economic legacy of former Tory prime minister Liz Truss — provoking a howl of outrage from Truss herself. It’s unfortunate for Badenoch, as barely a day goes by without the Labour government raising the specter of Truss.  Prime Minister Keir Starmer has his own problems, with his Labour predecessors Tony Blair and Gordon Brown never far from the headlines, offering (largely) unsolicited advice. “You have incomplete prime ministers,” says historian Anthony Seldon, who has written books on many departed prime ministers, including “The Impossible Office? The History of the British Prime Minister.” “Some of them felt that their agenda wasn’t yet over.” “They still want to feel like they have a purpose,” said political communications adviser Laura Emily Dunn, who has worked for Conservative cabinet ministers. SECOND BITE OF THE CHERRY  Since Starmer won his landslide just over a year ago, the Blair and Brown interventions have come thick and fast. Blair has used his Institute for Global Change think tank to publish a flurry of policy papers, with a particular focus on artificial intelligence.  Just days before crucial local elections earlier this year, Blair set alarm bells ringing in Downing Street with lines in a report warning that a maximalist approach to net zero carbon emissions was “doomed to fail” — and that politicians needed to face “inconvenient facts.” Blair has used his Institute for Global Change think tank to publish a flurry of policy papers, with a particular focus on artificial intelligence. | Jessica Lee/EPA A Downing Street spokesperson said the government would reach net zero “in a way that treads lightly on people’s lives” and “not by telling them how to live or behave.” While admitting there were a “range of views,” No 10 says it sees net zero as an “enormous economic opportunity.” Gordon Brown, who left office in 2010, has unapologetically spoken out on social justice issues through tweets, books, op-eds and even guest editing an edition of the New Statesman magazine — often in ways that are unhelpful to the Starmer project. Most notably, he called for the abolition of the “cruel” Conservative-era two-child cap on social security payments, a view shared by many Labour backbenchers, despite the cash-strapped government’s public opposition to a U-turn. Labour insiders insist there’s no resentment about the ex-leaders opining. A former Labour adviser granted anonymity to speak candidly said: “There is no expectation from the leader of the Labour Party that previous prime ministers should somehow stay silent out of respect.” “They’ve been diplomatic, but it’s been pretty clear what they think,” says Stewart Wood, a Labour peer and former adviser to Brown. LIFE AFTER POWER The interventionist streak in Britain’s former prime ministers may be a consequence of the strange wilderness in which they are left to roam after leaving office. While they receive £115,000 annually for life, a permanent security detail and are expected to attend Remembrance Sunday commemorations at the Cenotaph, there is no official responsibility or equivalent of a U.S.-style presidential library to promote an ex-prime minister’s legacy.  That can leave former leaders feeling stuck on the sidelines. “There is a resource that the country could benefit from using … in some way,” says Wood. “These people did serve us and serve our country,” agrees Dunn.  “If they were to disappear into lonely retirement, that would be wrong.” For some prime ministers, the well-trodden path of writing a memoir and joining the speaking circuit is seemingly no longer enough. Even John Major, the reserved Conservative former PM who kept out of the spotlight during Blair and Brown’s tenure, re-entered the public fray during the Brexit years. | Will Oliver/EPA “There’s been a trend in modern prime ministers not to want[ing] to consult their predecessors,” argues Seldon, saying leaders often fail to assess the actions of those who came before them in office. “They justifiably see their successors falling into the same bear traps that they fell in.” Even John Major, the reserved Conservative former PM who kept out of the spotlight during Blair and Brown’s tenure, re-entered the public fray during the Brexit years. He became a frequent and strident critic of former prime minister Boris Johnson. More recently, he demanded the strengthening of parliamentary standards for rule breakers. Theresa May couldn’t resist wading in either by urging the U.K. to act on delivering net zero, while David Cameron had a full-scale political comeback as foreign secretary during the last eight months of the Tory government. For others, there’s a desire to settle old scores. Johnson and Truss both saw their premierships implode abruptly — leaving them with plenty of unfinished business. Johnson writes columns for the Daily Mail newspaper and hasn’t shied away from strident interventions attacking Starmer’s agenda, including a fresh blast at his Middle East policy in the past few days. Truss, Britain’s shortest serving prime minister, frequently opines on X about Starmer’s economic policies, as well as his approach to justice and free speech, as she fights to reshape her tarnished legacy.  Over the weekend, she laid into current Conservative Leader Kemi Badenoch, accusing her of failing to talk about the “real failures of 14 years of Conservative government” and warning the same party that made Truss prime minister is now in “serious trouble.”  MAKING IT WORK So what makes a genuinely effective intervention from a former prime minister? “They have most influence when it’s least known publicly,” argues Peter Just, author of the book Margaret Thatcher: Life After Downing Street. Just says public interventions can be a sign that advice given behind the scenes “is not being listened to.” Seldon says Rishi Sunak, Britain’s most recent former prime minister, is a rare exception who has managed life after Downing Street well. | Tolga Akmen/EPA Seldon says Rishi Sunak, Britain’s most recent former prime minister, is a rare exception who has managed life after Downing Street well. Now a backbench MP, his statements have been limited to supporting Ukraine and backing India during its conflict with Pakistan.  Just divides ex-PMs into statesmen and women who focus on “whether or not the subsequent government of any party is doing things in the right way or in the wrong way” and politicians who represent “a particular philosophy of the world.”  “If you’re a bit more strategic and a bit more infrequent in your interventions, maybe they’ll carry more punch,” says Kieran Pedley of polling firm Ipsos, who argues that too many contributions can dilute a message. Ultimately, effective prime ministers can simply ignore the back seat drivers and hit the gas. “You should just do the policies you want — and let politics deal with itself,” says a former Tory adviser.

For Donald Trump, it was a “monumental victory.” For the Trump resistance, there are signs of hope buried in the fine print. Those dueling interpretations emerged Friday in the hours after the Supreme Court issued its blockbuster decision in Trump’s challenge to three nationwide injunctions that have blocked his attempt to deny citizenship to children of undocumented immigrants born on American soil. And both contain an element of truth. The 6-3 decision has a single headline holding: Federal district judges “lack authority” to issue “universal injunctions,” Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote for the conservative majority. It’s a breathtaking pronouncement given that district judges, with increasing frequency, have been issuing those sorts of injunctions for decades. It was precisely the bottom-line result that Trump’s Justice Department asked for in the case. Sweeping injunctions have blocked many of Trump’s second-term initiatives, not just his executive order on birthright citizenship. Now, the Supreme Court has made clear, an injunction against a challenged policy should ordinarily apply only to the individuals or organizations who sued. For everyone else, the policy can take effect even if a district judge believes it’s likely illegal. But Barrett’s 26-page opinion leaves a surprising degree of wiggle room. Yes, conventional nationwide injunctions are off the table, but Trump’s opponents say they see alternative routes to obtain effectively the same sweeping blocks of at least some policies that run afoul of the law and the Constitution. The court appeared to leave open three specific alternatives: Restyle the legal challenges as class-action lawsuits; rely on state-led lawsuits to obtain broad judicial rulings; or challenge certain policies under a federal administrative law that authorizes courts to strike down the actions of executive branch agencies. The viability of these three potential alternatives is not yet clear. But the court explicitly declined to rule them out. That led Justice Samuel Alito — who joined the majority opinion — to write a concurrence to raise concerns that the court was leaving loopholes that could undercut its main holding. If lower courts permit litigants to exploit those loopholes, Alito wrote, “today’s decision will be of little more than minor academic interest.” Legal experts were unsure about the practical implications of the ruling — especially in the birthright citizenship cases, but also in other challenges to Trump policies. “One of the things that’s problematic about this decision is how difficult it will be to implement,” said Amanda Frost, a University of Virginia law professor whose scholarship was cited in the justices’ ruling. “I think it’s really hard to say.” THE CLASS ACTION WORKAROUND The court’s decision explicitly left open one avenue for legal challengers to obtain a broad ruling that can apply to thousands or even millions of people: File a class-action case. Class actions allow large groups of similarly situated individuals to band together and sue over a common problem. If a judge sides with class-action challengers against a federal law or policy, the judge can issue a binding order that protects everyone in the class from being subject to the law or policy. Within hours of the court’s decision on Friday, one of the groups challenging Trump’s birthright citizenship policy moved to refashion its case as a class action. But class actions are not a panacea for the Trump resistance. Federal rules require special procedures before a court can “certify” a class. Litigants seeking to use the class-action mechanism must meet several criteria that don’t apply in ordinary lawsuits. And the Supreme Court itself has, in recent years, raised the legal standards for people to bring class actions. Barrett wrote that these heightened requirements underscore the need to limit universal injunctions, which she labeled a “shortcut” around the stringent standards that accompany class-action suits. “Why bother with a … class action when the quick fix of a universal injunction is on the table?” she wrote. Alito, in his concurrence Friday, warned district judges not to be overly lax in green-lighting class actions. “Today’s decision will have very little value if district courts award relief to broadly defined classes without following” procedural strictures, the conservative justice wrote. BROADER RELIEF FOR STATES A second potential silver lining for Trump’s opponents is that the court recognized that states may sometimes be entitled to broader injunctions than individual challengers. Barrett wrote in the majority opinion that district judges are empowered to provide “complete relief” to litigants who are improperly harmed by government policies. And when states sue the federal government, it’s possible, legal experts say, that “complete relief” requires a sweeping judicial remedy. That remedy might take the form of an injunction that applies everywhere in the suing states. Barrett herself contemplated that it might be proper for lower courts to forbid Trump from applying his executive order on birthright citizenship anywhere within the states that have challenged the order. (About 22 Democratic-led states have done so.) That scenario would create an odd patchwork: Automatic birthright citizenship would apply in half the country but would disappear in the other half until the Supreme Court definitively resolves the constitutionality of Trump’s executive order. There is even a chance that “complete relief” for a state might extend beyond the state’s borders and apply nationally — because residents of one state frequently move to another. Still, the bounds of what the court meant by “complete relief” remain murky. Frost said that it’s unclear what an injunction that affords “complete relief” to a state, while stopping short of a “universal” or “nationwide” remedy, would look like. “I don’t know, and that’s a problem of the court’s own making,” she said. Nonetheless, Democrats like New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin seized on the “complete relief” opening, saying it was a reason for optimism and effectively an endorsement of what he and other blue state officials had contended since the start. He and other Democratic attorneys general emphasized that they argued at all levels of the court system the need for nationwide relief in the birthright citizen case — because it would be pure chaos if residents left one state where they were entitled to birthright citizenship and moved to another state where they were not entitled to it, or vice versa. “As I sit here now, as it relates to states, the court confirmed what we thought all along. Nationwide relief should be limited but is available to states,” Platkin said. Barrett, however, wrote that the court was not taking a firm position on the scope of any injunction the states might be entitled to. “We decline to take up these arguments,” she wrote, adding that the lower courts should assess them first. SETTING ASIDE AGENCY ACTIONS The third potential workaround for opponents of Trump policies involves a federal statute known as the Administrative Procedure Act. That law authorizes lower courts to “set aside” actions by regulatory agencies if the courts find the actions to be arbitrary, rather than based on reasoned analysis. That sort of wholesale judicial relief in some ways resembles a nationwide or “universal” injunction, but Barrett wrote in a footnote that the court’s decision does not address the scope of relief in lawsuits filed under the APA. Some of the lawsuits challenging Trump’s policies have been brought under the APA. For instance, a district judge in Rhode Island issued a nationwide injunction against Trump’s attempt to freeze vast amounts of federal spending after the judge found that the move would violate the APA. But not all policies are agency actions that would be subject to APA challenges. The birthright citizenship policy, for instance, was promulgated through an executive order, not through any federal agency. On the other hand, the order has a 30-day “ramp-up period” in which agencies will develop guidelines before implementing the order. Those guidelines might become targets for APA challenges.