Please do not get your hopes up if you are a "Remainer" or if you dislike Boris Johnston and don't trust him as our PM. Sure the Supreme Court has ruled that what he did was illegal, but they have just now made the law on this. It is freshly minted so to speak. Boris was mischievous, crafty, devious. But that's him. We won't see his head roll and there will be no "punishment" to fit the crime. He has even said he'll just go back and ask for another suspension, this time presumably within the time honoured constraints of parliamentary routines for this time of year.
The judgement is good nontheless because we cannot have a situation where any PM can go and ask the Queen, without having first consulted Parliament, to suspend Parliament outwith the normal time honoured recesses for holidays and electioneering, which always follow standard timescales laid down by tradition. The PM has to be accountable for his actions, and if he has wangled the suspension of Parliament, all we have left is the law. So it wasn't a political matter - it was rightly a legal matter.
But what will happen now is anyone's guess. Who gets to recall Parliament? If it's the government, they'll drag their heels anyway. If not, then who? Has it enough will to organise itself to get it back into session? And thereafter? Who will scrutinise what Johnston might claim to be a deal, no matter how spurious it might seem? Parliament might well debate into the moments before deadline, but the deadline is law. It would need some fresh law to unmake it. I still have a feeling that the ship will slide into the waters of Brexit down the deadline slipway. The decisions of both the Labour and Liberal Parties, while I admire the Lib Dems' Jo Swinson for her bold unequivocal stance, are like bolting the stable doors after the horse has gone. Renegotiating, re-referenduming, re-anything won't be an option once we are out. Going back in will mean we go cap in hand and have to eat what we are offered. It makes all the talk and frantic voting on resolutions at the Labour Party Conference seem a bit vacuous.
So the ruling is a good one for justice, and the accountability of our highest office in the land. But it has no bearing I believe on our ultimate immediate fate with regard to Brexit.
The judgement is good nontheless because we cannot have a situation where any PM can go and ask the Queen, without having first consulted Parliament, to suspend Parliament outwith the normal time honoured recesses for holidays and electioneering, which always follow standard timescales laid down by tradition. The PM has to be accountable for his actions, and if he has wangled the suspension of Parliament, all we have left is the law. So it wasn't a political matter - it was rightly a legal matter.
But what will happen now is anyone's guess. Who gets to recall Parliament? If it's the government, they'll drag their heels anyway. If not, then who? Has it enough will to organise itself to get it back into session? And thereafter? Who will scrutinise what Johnston might claim to be a deal, no matter how spurious it might seem? Parliament might well debate into the moments before deadline, but the deadline is law. It would need some fresh law to unmake it. I still have a feeling that the ship will slide into the waters of Brexit down the deadline slipway. The decisions of both the Labour and Liberal Parties, while I admire the Lib Dems' Jo Swinson for her bold unequivocal stance, are like bolting the stable doors after the horse has gone. Renegotiating, re-referenduming, re-anything won't be an option once we are out. Going back in will mean we go cap in hand and have to eat what we are offered. It makes all the talk and frantic voting on resolutions at the Labour Party Conference seem a bit vacuous.
So the ruling is a good one for justice, and the accountability of our highest office in the land. But it has no bearing I believe on our ultimate immediate fate with regard to Brexit.
No comments:
Post a Comment