General Chat

yes Caroline but you miss the point the legal issue was not the policy of brexit one way or the other and the court made that quite clear. The issue was and is can the government of the day override statute law using the royal prerogative? The answer is no. Only parliament can change statute law. The UKGov submission of inferred authority via the referendum was flayed in court.

It is worth bearing in mind that that has been the legal situation since at least 1610. The bloody civil war 1640-1648 was fought over essentially these issues i.e. is England to be governed by law and is parliament supreme?

All of the other bills concerning major changes in our relationship with Europe have requred an Act of Parliament and the debates were often fesity. I cannot see brexit being blocked in the Commons because of the referendum vote although the SNP can quite properly vote against.

The big change will be that the hows and whys and wherefores will no longer be considered secretly behind closed doors but will have to be debated by and voted on by Parliament. Surely right and proper in a democracy ? Additonally following a normal course of action will allay a lot of the fears of the remain camp who have most def not packed up and "got used to it".

T May and her clique simply do not want and do not understand democracy. Neither evidently does the Daily Mal which does not even have a basic concept of the idea of the rule of law. Of course her hands will be tied. British Prime Ministers have always had to work with the grain of the law and parliament. The last serious uses of the royal prerogative brought us the imbroglios in Iraq and Libya.

Such attitudes of T May and her clique will inevitably lengthen the brexit process and sour smooth negotiations with the 27.

If pursued to the point of the only deal on offer being a "hard exit" which parliament will not accept then the wheels will come off T May's trolley. She herself is the biggest potential roadblock to a successful brexit. Quite why people, believe in her after a catalogue of sorry failure at the Home Office I have no idea.

The UK could very likely do extremely well via a "Europe Light" including the Single Market and Customs Union and a restricted version of Freedom of Movement.

To get there the govt will need to have the Commons four square behind it and a lot of deft negotiation. At present there is very little to encourage belief that this might happen.

Not all Tory MPs are idealogues or as stupid as Liam Fox. A lot speak various EU languages fluently and have excellent contacts. Right now T May ignores this resource. Stupid, as by bringing a lot more of the party's know how into the action May would have a far stronger team.

Those who want this country run on populist lines as a fscist state have missed the boat. They should move to somewhere more congenial for their ideas such as Turkey or Byelorusse.

Except...Parliament did to some degree debate it already when they decided to hold the referendum ....and then spend public money sending leaflets out to everyone telling them about the referendum where call me Dave said he'd follow the public wishes....how much public money were the brexit camp given to promote their views...where in that debate and that leaflet did it say no matter what the result we'll debate it again in Parliament ??

Gina Miller - a new political name to me.

I must try to keep up.

The judgement of the HIghCourt should not have been a "bombshell" as the Bill of Rights 1689 has been available to read for over 300 years. The Bill of Rights became a keystone of our constitution orecisely becase the executive (Charles I, Cromwell etc ) attempted to rule without parliament. If T May wants to give it a go the Whitehall Banqueting House is still there.

If some newspapers are staffed by poorly educated hacks and neo fascists such Richard Desmond then that is just too bad.

Just consider. Parliament in this country is not some kind of soviet era rubber stamp. It makes and unmakes the laws by which we live after debate and consulation. If the resolutions of Parliament could be simply over ridden by the executive it would all be a waste of time, we would be living in a dictatorship.

For that reason the "royal prerogaitve" cannot be used to create, repeal or vary domestic laws.

The High Court was very clear that its decision had nothing to do with brexit as such just that the invocation of S50 was not in the power of the executive becasue it would remove important citizen rights conferred by Act of Parliament. Simples.

Even David Davis has grasped the matter. He understands that it is of no use for parliament to pass a motion approving T May use of S50. There will have to be an Act of Parliament. (The chances of the govt winning on appeal are next to zero.)

The Daily Express and others are getting well ahead of themselves. The narrow referendum vote " advised" parliament (not the current P.M.) of a preference to leave the EU. In the typical lacksadaisical way of D Cameron how the leave process should be managed was ignored.

T May has a long record at the Home Office of wasting large sums of tax payers money on unwinnable cases. Her iill informed decision on S50 shows that she has learned nothing. It also presages a lot of future trouble. A wiser course would be to drop the appeal where she will not only lose but set a precedent in stone plsu a good few stinging remarks on top.

Parliament will not try and block brexit. What it will do is to ensure there is proper debate and control of the executive and that the process is carried out in a democratic manner not by a clique behind closed doors.

It is of course quite possible that over the next few years opinion may shift sharply when confronted with a dogs dinner for breakfast. If, say, 60-70% preferred to drop brexit then what ? By working with parliament T May is far more likely to get a good deal and avoid such a scenario. I fear that she cannot work in a collegiate sort of way - she has never been able to do so before.

http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/728672/High-Court-Article-50-ruling-Law-expert-warns-against-Brexit-betrayal PARLIAMENT should think carefully about betraying the British people by blocking Brexit, as no-one was told MPs had the right to veto the EU Referendum result, a law expert has warned. Steve Peers, a professor of EU law, urged caution after the High Court’s bombshell decision on Thursday as hudges ruled Prime Minister Theresa May does not have the power to start the process of taking Britain out of the bloc without a Parliamentary vote. The EU law expert said: "No-one stood up and said Parliament had the right to overturn this [vote].
“I would be amazed, genuinely amazed, if MPs who have been given such an unambiguous message from the British people decided they would overturn the message of the British people.”

With that sort of majority do you really think she will get voted out if there were to be an election? Not unless the local party de-select her.

IPG: "As the member for Maidenhead, TM has one of the most safest Conservative seats in the country. She had a tad under 66% of the vote in 2015".

Then we had the referendum, and Maidenhead voted to remain......
Not such a 'safe' seat now!

"the individual must secure a seat in the Parliament. "
i.e. House of Lords or House of Commons, Parliament is not the same thing as the House of Commons. Members of the upper house are appointed they don't "secure" there place and are most def. not elected.

For hundreds of years there were Prime Ministers who sat in the Lords eg Lord Melbourne. Alec Douglas Hume was the last sitting member of the House of Lords to become PM (1963).

Government ministers are often members of the House of Lords rather than the Commons though most have been MPs at some time.

Nevertheless as a PM may serve as such for years without a fresh GE mandate it is a real stretch to say that a British PM is elected by the general electorate. Indeed in Dave Cameron's case he had not even won a general election and was put in power thanks to a decision taken by the third placed party which ended up in govt. Rum sort of democracy some may say.

As the member for Maidenhead, TM has one of the most safest Conservative seats in the country. She had a tad under 66% of the vote in 2015.

No prime minister is DIRECTLY elected by the voters, but the individual must secure a seat in the Parliament. To become a Member of Parliament, the candidate must secure more votes than his rival in their locality.
THAT is where the 'people' have their DIRECT say in the matter.

Who knows if the local electorate would have voted for May as their representative, had there been another local election?

'As the UK's Government contemplates how to exit the EU, it is also fighting to retain London as Europe's unofficial financial capital for banks & insurers - a lucrative position that other cities such as Paris & Frankfurt are poised to assume'. (The Real Truth magazine).

Because call me Dave thought he'd win it hands down.

The referendum was a complete waste of time and money. What on earth is the point of asking people to vote on something that will never go through if it doesn't have the approval of Parliament? As its going to any way, why not let Parliament decide in the first place and save all the commotion and bad feelng, family upsets and worry that this wretched exercise has caused.

Latest press release from Brussels,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyenRCJ_4Ww



;-)

As the judgement has spelled out, the most fundamental part of the UK's constitution is that prerogative powers can never override legislation previously enacted by Parliament.

As the exiters keep telling us the result was the will of the people, they conveniently failed to mention it has no legal standing whatsoever, a point which has also been clarified in the judgement.

There is also no other currently existing legislation which permits the changes to domestic law which invocation s50 will bring about, hence the need to involve parliament.

An interesting aside to this is the ongoing need for the railway companies to run 'parliamentary' trains were the cessation of a service enshrined in law can not occur without an further Act of Parliament.

No British Prime Minister has ever been elected by the voters.

The electorate votes for an MP on the understanding that he/she will support this or that party with the knowledge that a few may jump ship. The leader of the winning party will become Prime Minister but he/she is chosen by arcane processes in which voting by the general population is excluded.

In the recent past we have had James Callaghan, John Major, Gordon Brown and now Theresa May all as PM without their party obtaining a new mandate. My own feeling is that this is quite wrong and the party of replacement PMs should face a GE within 6 months unless a national emergency such as war precluded it.

The Bill of Rights 1689 says that the royal prerogative may not over ride statute law. If it could then the UK would become a dictatorship which of course it was under Oliver Cromwell. Since 1689 the scope of RP has been much reduced. Most recently this has related to defense where the govt. no longer feels able to wage war without a commons vote in favour. No small matter but the inevtiable result of the judge led Chilcott enquiry..

Generally the High Court has done nothing to weaken the prerogative power for making and unmaking treaties. The Single European Act is an unusual treaty related statute because it confers specific rights to subjects of the Crown. In particular it gives the right to live and work in the whole of the EU and to buy and sell property there. Invoking S50 would nullify those rights. Hence the requirement for Parliament, not the executive using RP, to vote the invocation of S50.

This is as clear as day and has been for months. Unless the Supreme Court wants to effectively revoke the sovereignty of Parliament it will reach the same conclusion.

btw in case nobody noticed the referendum was advisory not mandatory. If it had been mandatory then S50 could have been invoked last July.

Populism is not democracy no matter how much the Daily Express, Farage and co scream and shout and stamp their feet.

I would be amazed if Parliament blocked the invocation of S50. However its approval will come with a raft of conditions exactly what T May did not want.

Scaremongering is a much loved Brexit party game.

Apparently, the Government is appealing :-S

....that's not everyone's view :-D

Kense :-D

Talking of Parliamentary democracy - it would be handy if the Prime Minister had actually been elected by the people!!