[trigger warning]
The Government has announced that the rape defendant anonymity proposal in the coalition agreement has been dropped.
Justice Minister Crispin Blunt said there was not sufficient evidence to justify the move.
This was pretty evident from the way the report originally due in July providing the evidence for the move slipped to September, then October, and then quietly disappeared.
Other reasons for its abandonment presumably include not being able to agree what the policy was, the mostly-Conservative Justice Ministers not wanting to go to lots of effort fighting for a Lib Dem policy, there almost certainly not being enough votes in Parliament to pass it, and there being hardly anyone in the UK who would justifiably benefit from it.
The bad news is, of course, that the actual rapists still find it nearly guaranteed that they'll get away with their assaults, often with the complicity of the police and justice system, and that huge amounts of effort were required both inside and outside Parliament just to stop the situation getting even worse.
