Nicely put

“…sometimes accurate…”

Can’t read this story.

And what is happening to the Continental Telegraph?

C&P’ed (Tim, I’m not sure what your policy is on this, please delete if I’m breaking it?):

Be honest, Sir John: this case is about revenge

Dominic Lawson

The Supreme Court is being used to block Brexit, not boost democracy

Last week’s hearing at the Supreme Court of Gina Miller’s case to reverse Boris Johnson’s proroguing of parliament was nothing to do with Brexit. Perish the thought. But lest anyone had been under such an absurd misapprehension, the president of the court, Baroness Hale, concluded the hearing with these words: “I must repeat that this case is not about when and on what terms the UK leaves the European Union . . . We are solely concerned with the lawfulness of the prime minister’s decision to advise Her Majesty to prorogue parliament.”

How odd, then, that the hearing had been listed on the Supreme Court’s own website under “Brexit-related judicial review cases”. When this was pointed out, the page on the court’s website was rapidly altered to conform retrospectively to Lady Hale’s obiter dictum: the hearing was suddenly no longer a “Brexit-related judicial review case” but a “Prorogation-related judicial review case.”

Satisfied? I’m not sure I am, even though Lady Hale was right that the hearing itself did not address the legality of the Brexit process. She covers the “what” but not the “why”. And the reason why the astonishingly determined businesswoman Gina Miller brought the case is to stop Brexit. The same was true of her earlier case at the Supreme Court, which forced the government to allow parliament a vote on the triggering of article 50 (which sets the UK on the path out of the EU).

On both occasions Miller insisted her motives were purely to ensure the appropriate democratic procedures are honoured. She must think that none of us can recall her October 2016 interview with The Times, in which she described how she was “physically sick” when the referendum result was declared. She also recalled her then 11-year-old son saying to her that morning: “But you’re going to do something, Mummy, you always do.” Ms Miller’s reply to her son was: “I’m not promising anything, but I will talk to some lawyers.”

Did she ever. And this domestic exchange shows that from the very moment of the referendum result, by her own account, Miller has tried to find all legal means to prevent it from being enacted. Whatever Lady Hale correctly says about the nature of the legal arguments in her courtroom, those many millions who voted leave will be also be correct in their visceral view that this courtly process is just part of the effort by well-financed losers to frustrate or even cancel the result of the biggest plebiscite in the country’s history.

Miller was joined in last week’s hearing by the former prime minister, Sir John Major. He — or rather Lord Garnier, the barrister he hired — advanced the argument that Johnson had “lied to the Queen” about his reasons for proroguing parliament: that it had not been for the stated purpose of preparing for a Queen’s speech and a new legislative programme, but to prevent parliament from blocking a “no-deal” Brexit on October 31.

Actually, the PM doesn’t give the monarch “reasons”, disingenuous or otherwise, for requesting a prorogation. He simply tells her his advice is that parliament be prorogued, and she gives her consent. It’s not, and in the modern era never has been, a discussion with two possible outcomes. Just as it wasn’t when Major advised the Queen to prorogue parliament in 1997. So he wouldn’t have had to reassure her it was merely coincidental that the timing of that prorogation prevented parliament from debating the imminent report on the Tory cash-for-questions scandal before the ensuing general election.

Nevertheless, Major sought in last week’s hearing to compare Johnson to an estate agent who had sold a property on false pretences, pointing to a case in which this had resulted in an adverse court verdict for said estate agent: “It could hardly be suggested that the duties of the prime minister to the monarch are less than those of an estate agent to a homeowner.”

Major has always been a master of unintentional bathos and he did not disappoint. But the difficulty here, as the former Supreme Court justice Lord Sumption pointed out in an interview before the hearing, is that this is not a legal issue akin to the settlement of a property deal. It is purely in the political realm, and the remedies for any alleged untruthfulness or deception should be settled in the same sphere (the court of public opinion, otherwise known as a general election).

As I know from one of my own encounters with the formidable Sumption (frequently described, not to his displeasure, as “the cleverest man in Britain”), he regards the tactics of the leave campaign with contempt, and Johnson as a charlatan: he told the BBC that “the prorogation was politically outrageous . . . [but] my own view is this is a political issue, not a legal one . . . the issue is the propriety of the motives, and that seems to me a fundamentally political issue.”

Yes, it is about motives: all the way down. It was remarkable that a former Conservative prime minister should be taking the current Tory PM to court on the grounds that he “lied to the Queen”. But Sir John, whom even his friends have described to me as perpetually thin-skinned and unforgiving of any slight, cannot get over the fact it was the journalist Johnson whose trenchant and sometimes accurate dispatches from Brussels caused him so many difficulties as PM, whipping up the Eurosceptic “bastards” (as Major characteristically described them) in his party.

Still, if we must discuss duplicity over Brexit, we should look to the record of Johnson’s accuser. Major had welcomed David Cameron’s decision in 2013 to hold a referendum, saying it “could heal many old sores and have a cleansing effect on politics. It will be healthy to let the electorate re-endorse our membership or pull us out altogether.” Then, during the campaign, he declared that if the result went for leave, “It would not be politically credible for people to say, we’ve reconsidered, let’s have another referendum. If we vote to go out, we’re out, and we have to get on with it.”

Now, Major is fighting not to get on with it, and backs the second referendum he said would never happen. By joining Miller, he is making sure that, far from cleansing politics, the country is more bitterly divided. And such division can never be settled by a court.

The hearing is in any case otiose, as parliament passed a measure to block no-deal Brexit on October 31, ahead of prorogation. And even if the court were to order Johnson to “un-prorogue” parliament, such a rebuke would only add to the PM’s reputation among leave voters as the voice of the people against “the Establishment”. Like it or not, the Supreme Court is now hopelessly enmeshed in pure politics. That’s bad.

Hitchens today – good article

Actually, there is no such thing as the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom. They can call it that if they like, but the title is a fiction. There is nothing supreme about it.

Until we leave the EU, our actual Supreme Court is, as it has been for many years, the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg.

But if we ever manage to escape from the EU, then Parliament is a far higher court than this self-important assembly of lawyers in suits.
…
The nasty thing has been grafted on to our free constitution by Blairite revolutionaries – many of them Left-wing lawyers.

They had long planned a slow-motion putsch against conservative Britain. For this tiny, self-important group of men and women realised that they had an astonishing power.

They were allowed to decide what the law meant. And nobody could challenge them.

This was bad enough when they took advantage of the vague wording of ‘Human Rights’ charters.

They used this to invent all kinds of rights for those members of society they favoured and wished to help.

In the same way, they abolished the former freedoms of those who had been in charge before.
…
That use of the law to change our culture and morals was revolutionary enough. That brilliant mind, and former Supreme Court judge Lord Sumption, recently warned this would ‘entrench a broad range of liberal principles’ in the foundations of the State. Democracy would then be almost powerless to remove or limit them.

He then accused his fellow lawyers of being so sure they were right that they claimed a monopoly on deciding how the country should be governed.

He warned, with astonishing brutality, that such a belief is ‘no different from the claim of communism, fascism, monarchism, Catholicism, Islamism and all the other great isms that have historically claimed a monopoly of legitimate political discourse on the ground that its advocates considered themselves to be obviously right’. Crikey.

The readiness of the courts to hear legal actions against the Prime Minister’s suspension of Parliament is a whole new outrage.
…
There is no law, no precedent. Within our constitution, Prime Ministers can do this sort of thing and often it will be right and necessary.

You might as well get the Supreme Court to rule on whether the red wines of Burgundy are better than those of Bordeaux.

The judges could have a lot of fun examining the matter. But their opinion, at the end, would be worth nothing.

And so we see from the ‘evidence’ presented at this gathering of learned kangaroos. It’s all opinions.

I’m all in favour of opinions. I express lots of them. I wish my opinions influenced politicians and judges, and the people. But opinions are not laws, and they are not facts.
…
I just hope the ‘Supreme Court’ will have the sense to recognise this and throw the whole thing out. But in such frightening times as these, I can’t be sure.

Our whole tradition of fair, wise government is tottering, and I am not convinced it can survive these games.

Dominic Raab grilled by Andrew Marr over relationship with the EU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d4bBj_RgkKc

Jeremy Corbyn on Andrew Marr, said it could be more beneficial for the UK to be outside of the EU if the right deal became available.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEi7hOcemIo

.
Jeremy Corbyn’s full interview on The Andrew Marr Show
youtube.com/watch?v=Guwl9iRqwRE

The Andrew Marr Show 22 Sep 2019
youtube.com/watch?v=jD9VlBjrO6o

Pcar – is Boris inching towards a Brexit stitch-up?

Possibly, but Frankie was right*

Yesterday it was leaked that any ERG or others who vote against a Johnson deal will be kicked out of party.

This has got to be the most unnecessary leak since R Kelly. Of course they will, he’s already seen off 21 rebels and many of his backbenchers are unhappy about that. He can’t afford to even hint at the possibility of backing down now.

If he decides to emulate Treeza May it doesn’t matter how many ERG folks are purged. TBP will win something like 20% in the general election and the Tories will never form a government again. In which case… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Realistically tho, all signs point to no deal being possible. Why would this Parliament agree to anything Boris brings back now? And there seems little incentive for the EU27 to change its stance.

And there’s next to nothing in it for the government. The PM has seen his predecessor defenestrated over her cunning plan to keep us locked in a Belgian sex dungeon. He’s seen his party eviscerated at the European elections as a direct result of said sadomasochism. It seems unlikely he wants to repeat the experience (and unlike May, he won’t be forgiven by the institutional class for achieving BRINO, they now want nothing short of revocation). But if he’s foolish enough to close off his only path to victory, we’ll carry on with someone else.

*Relax

Steve,

“And there’s next to nothing in it for the government. The PM has seen his predecessor defenestrated over her cunning plan to keep us locked in a Belgian sex dungeon. He’s seen his party eviscerated at the European elections as a direct result of said sadomasochism. It seems unlikely he wants to repeat the experience (and unlike May, he won’t be forgiven by the institutional class for achieving BRINO, they now want nothing short of revocation). But if he’s foolish enough to close off his only path to victory, we’ll carry on with someone else.”

This is the process that the EUphiles can never seem to grasp.

Remoaners are like watching someone who keeps betting more to regain his losses.They could have settled for a reformed EU after Lisbon, instead they wanted nothing then, so we got a referendum. Then they didn’t respect the result and we’re looking like No Deal is a likely outcome.

Along the way, we’ve dispensed with a whole load of people and have the sort of bloke that Conservatives like, with his main advisor as the sort of bloke that hardcore libertarians like.

Next step if we don’t leave in October is that Farage takes over the right. Wins an election, takes us out of the EU and then guts the establishment. I hope the establishment understand that.