The other option (and this is I admit charitable) is that this was always obviously never going to work and this was all a performative political thing in the first place.

By deliberately going after unwinnable cases, there is perhaps here a deliberate attempt to project a "voice of common sense" - effectively demonstrating that this is uneforceable nonsense, regardless of what the then-current government and media insisted. So they make a big show of it being defeated in the hope that the powers that be seen sense and quietly drop it.

Or they really are delusional. I dunno.