Westministenders. Boris we wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy Constitutional Crisis?

[RedToothBrush]

Its twelve days to go until the end of the HoC 2016 calendar and we can already tell that everyone is wishing it was Christmas already. Poor Theresa though, she doesn’t get to play with toys on the last day of term. Instead she has a grilling on the lack of spending on health and social care spending by a commons select committee.

Hopefully the next couple of weeks will calm down a little though as thoughts turn elsewhere.

The A50 case has come to an end. There is no way of telling which way the judges will go but the decision to appeal may yet haunt the government as it will bring the issue of devolution to a head, whether they win or lose. The ruling is due in mid January.

Win and they are going to have to amend the Devolution Acts and potentially impose Brexit on people with certain national identities who voted against it. This is profoundly undemocratic and a betrayal of the principles of Devolution and the expectations of the will of the people.
Lose and they could face a full blown constitutional crisis, with NI or Scotland or both having a veto over Brexit, and the government effectively unable to trigger a50 in line with our constitutional requirement. Which is again, potentially profoundly undemocratic and against the referendum and the expectations of the will of the people.

It was a scenario that predictable and avoidable at several junctions yet the government under Cameron and May ploughed on regardless. It a scenario that we are now locked into, due to deciding to use the courts rather than just go through parliament.

It could also massively restrict the power of the executive under the Royal Prerogative. Ironically this is something that David Davis has campaigned for, for years so I guess he gets a victory however the decision goes.
So the chances of some kind of crisis with regard to our constitutional makeup and the union seem inevitable in the new year.

The government despite a defeat in Richmond Park continues to lean right and characterise anyone with concerns as unpatriotic or not honourable. This is the last resort of the desperate.

They have however, conceded to Labour that they will publish a report on their Brexit plans before a50 is triggered. In return Labour have promised that they will let a50 be triggered by the end of March. Is this a good thing? It remains to be seen. In some ways this is a blinder for Labour.

They are pro-Brexit but anti-lack of plan in theory. This only works if the plan actually has substance. If there is no substance in the plan and its nothing more than empty words then they face having to go back on a commons vote committing them to a deal with the Conservatives. It could therefore be a trap for them. It marginalises the none English Nationalist voices too. Voices that are important and deserve to be heard. Voices that if they are not listened to, will have consequences.

What will the Sleaford and North Hykenham (yep again) by election bring?

A vote of confidence in the government, a new ever growing and rising fear of UKIP or something else. How will this colour the start to the New Year?

I don’t know. 2016 has apparently been the year of gin as people turn to the drink to cope. Everything is now Brexitty and Red, White and Blue.
But whose’s? Britain’s? The USA’s? Russia’s? Or France’s?

We look forward to, or more to the point we fear what 2017 could bring. A feeling we have not felt to this degree in many years. A General Election with a UKIP breakthrough. The end of peace in NI. A repeat of the age old betrayal of Scotland’s by the English. The Welsh damned to irrelevance and marginalisation. Brexit vettoed and the subsequent political fallout. The end of the NHS. A bonfire of rights. A new Italian PM and possibly new Eurozone economic crisis. Fillon or Le Pen and at last a real victory for the far right in Europe. The chance of Merkel’s Last Stand. Putin’s partnership with Assad and a new genocide we are powerless to stop. Erdogan pulling the plug on the EU door and unleashing a new wave of refugees onto European shores. The horror of ISIS both within the West and within the Middle East. Trump’s neo-fascism and rise of a New World Order. There is something in there for everyone to dread.

Which will it be? Probably something we have not yet foreseen such are these times.

Act 2 of Brexit in Westminstenders land is bound to be just as dramatic and of course, we leave 2016 in true soap fashion on a real cliff hanger.

All the more reason to enjoy the holiday period and break whatever your politics.

Boris Johnson is a liability for any government.
Can you imagine if he had been chosen to be PM??

On another note, cam across that table. Not sure at all if it is accurate but it makes you think how small the margin fir 'winning' actually was. It also raise the question of what is the will of the people today.
scontent.fman1-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t31.0-8/15250791_10153954461217181_6146648302324823642_o.jpg?oh=cf02c00c10573a3b4a9070580962c190&oe=58F188F4&dl=1

As far as BoJo is concerned - I am glad he has spoken out on this issue. It's good to see someone take a principled stance instead of turning a blind eye to vicious regimes because we can sell arms to them.

YY.
Absolutely.

Theresa May isn't going to ask us what our will is. Even if it had changed to overwhelmingly Remain, which I don't think it has, she is going to carry on appeasing the UKIPers in her party. They are all wealthy men, every last one of them as far as I can tell, so their nests will be feathered come what may.

I was pleased to see UKIP come a poor second in Sleaford and North Hykeham. This was despite Mr UKIP himself being in attendance.

Sorry to lower the tone, but here's something for the weekend...
www.facebook.com/PokeHQ/videos/1394444977262458/

3 million Brexit tweets reveal Leave voters tweeted about immigration more than anything else. Not sure about the demographic that uses twitter though? I don't, except to listen in and just once to get myself in the paper and on the local blog because something actually happened in our road. I am pretty sure the older Leave voters I know would never have heard of it, though they did talk about immigration more than any other issue.....

www.buzzfeed.com/jamesball/3-million-brexit-tweets-reveal-leave-voters-talked-about-imm?utm_term=.ee9qBlGM9#.upobxeAyZ

Two fingers Maybe later after Farage levels alcohol at the Christmas drinks........ That was what it took to watch QT, and then I must have overdone because I was completely unable to work out what exactly Pete Doherty was saying to Michael Portillo and Andrew Neil or even why they were talking to each other in the first place .....

The not even considered by the High Court impact on the Devolution settlement and the whole UK Constitution is why I think the Supreme Court may well rule for the Government. The more areas of the UK Constitution are dragged in and affected by what increasingly looks like a point of Parliamentary procedure than substance the stronger the argument Lord Eadie made that Parliament can look after itself becomes. It is not for the Courts to be dictating to the Legislature.

I think a constitutional crisis is the last thing the supreme court judges want, but I think you have what you say there, a bit about face.

They are supposed to determine what is legal and what the law says. They can not rule a particular way just to avoid that, as that is a political decision not a legal one.

If they decide that the law says that Westminster can not past a law that has such a huge impact on the people of NI or Scotland without their explicit consent, then they are obliged to say that and rule against the government.

They can only return this back to government to sort out because as you say, its not for the courts to rule over government. In this case that might include recognising the power and sovereignty the Scottish / NI governments as being uniquely separate to Westminster as well as Westminster itself having its own sovereignty.

The crisis will have been caused by government and they have to be the ones to resolve the matter not the courts. It might not prove to be in the way the government would like, but the must still obey what law has been written and forms our constitution.

As you point out, this does create something of a situation for them, but the courts need to be seen as passive and merely repeating what the law says in a way that others can understand and then act upon rather than creating political decisions.

My feeling is that, if they do go down this route, they will stress this in some way and perhaps provide a step by step route the government must take and achieve to compile with the law rather than saying this is a no and saying Brexit is impossible. Its then up to the government to take steps to jump over those legal hurdles - based on their policy.

To expand and explain what I mean a bit more; the court could rule that Scotland (please insert NI for every reference to Scotland hereafter as it applies equally) must consent to Westminster policies that have this level of affect on it. You have to imagine though that they have no interest in whether Scotland might refuse this consent or give this consent. On this part they are effectively neutral. The actual result of the referendum is irrelevant to them. This is the political part of the issue not a legal one.

Therefore the political problem is for the government to resolve and not the courts. It might well be the case that Scotland refuse to give this consent, but that's not the fault of the courts. This is a political not legal consequence. (This difference is crucial to the case and I freely admit that is difficult to understand and define at times but this fundamental conception has been almost completely lost in reporting of the case by the media). The government will have to take some sort of action to persuade Scotland to compromise somehow or find a solution that means that Scotland has different terms to the rest of the country that then allow a50 to be triggered under these conditions. Scotland might completely refuse point blank, but we all know this would come at a political price to Scotland and Scottish people too. (For example violent protest or attacks on Scots or financial/politically hostility to problems that particularly affect Scotland). That's a political decision by Scotland and not the responsibility of the Courts to tell the Scottish government what political decision they should make.

I find it interesting that Guy Verhorfstadt is putting this idea of allowing some British Citizens to remain EU citizens on the table. If this is the case this potentially does offer a way that the Scottish Governments and NI Assembly could get around a constitutional problem over their consent.

The timing in itself, is interesting. Especially when no other idea is on the table and there is otherwise a complete refusal to engage in pre-negotiations.

Its been said a lot that May's idea of negotiations is totally wrong and certainly not how Europeans like to do business. Instead of holding cards like poker, they like to be open about what they want and what they would like to offer and have it fully on the table.

Now I might be very wrong here, but If this is the case, then look what is really on the table here. Could this be a way for the government to navigate its way through and avoid a potential constitutional crisis that revolves around the devolved settlements and the parts of the union have different opinions? It would be up to the government to then act and talk about this aspect and how this might be used to their advantage.

The EU do not want the UK to have a constitutional crisis because of what this would mean for them too. Its not in their interests for us to have one.

Of course all this talk of a constitutional crisis is currently still only a theoretical one based on the possibility of the Supreme Court ruling in a particular way. And it also needs to be stressed that even if the Court rules in favour of the government on this point there will be a political price to them as Scotland and the Scottish people will react to Brexit being imposed on them somehow by increasing nationalist sentiments and attitudes.

Of course politically the government might also choose to ignore this potential avenue and pretend that its the courts at fault or the EU want us to have a constitutional crisis and are engineering the situation that way, because think it benefits them and their agenda and they want the public to believe this...

As I say, be aware of what is political and what is not political and who is doing what, when and why they might do that.

Thanks Red!

I'm really grateful to the less remainery people who hang out on these threads.

But Guy Verhorfstadt's suggestion of allowing an opt-in to EU citizenship for UK citizens is very theoretical at the moment. NI and Scotland couldn't possibly rely on that happening (it might be within his gift to offer it but it would be up to other EU countries to agree to it as a final part of the Brexit deal) so, presumably, they wouldn't agree to any deal on the basis of that. Therefore, if the Supreme Court does rule that Scotland and NI have to agree to Westminster imposing Brexit, then Verhorfstadt's offer is irrelevant as it is completely informal and unenforceable currently.

However, if GV's offer is part of the final negotiation and enough people do take up EU citizenship, does that mean that they are not only allowed FoM etc but also offered the protections that the EU offers such as ECHR etc that "we" are supposedly keen to break away from? I think it is a masterstroke of Machiavellian counter-plotting if this is the case, a modern-day Trojan horse .

Thank you red.

lala I'm not sure the people in the UK could rely on protections such as the ECHR if the UK repeals all the laws that gave UK citizens recourse to the Court, while living in the UK. After all, I'm sure EU citizens living in non-EU countries can't take their cases to the ECHR. If they were living in an EU country, holding individual EU citizenship, then presumably they could.

Ah yes, Patty, you've spotted the tiny flaw in my theory .

Red I am not sure about your analysis that there is nothing to see here with the Sleaford by election result and that it is just what you would expect from an ordinary by election in that constituency.

If it was just an ordinary by election, then the result might be pretty bog standard and not tell us anything about the political mood of the population.

But it was not an ordinary by election. A lot of people drew a lot of conclusions from the Richmond Park result, saying it was a vote against Brexit etc etc and trying to extrapolate from RP to suggest a high level of anti-Brexit feeling across the country from the swing to the Lib Dems. If nothing else the Sleaford result shows that, surprise, surprise, views in Richmond may not be replicated elsewhere. Sleaford voted about 38% remain. That is a lot of voters who could have done a RP as a protest against Brexit/Teresa May etc. But they didn't.

So the fact that the Sleaford result was unremarkable does tell us something, as current circumstances are out of the ordinary so no change is, if you see what I mean, a change.

Who would Sleaford remainers vote for? The Lib dems? Apparently some did switch to the Lib dems, but, unlike Richmond Park, there is no history of Lib Dem MPs, and the Lib Dems weren't targeting the seat.

Nobody thought a Lib Dem win was possible. Is it reasonable to expect Remain Conservatives to go to the polling station to increase the minority Lib Dem minority vote?

I suspect many remainers expressed their feelings by staying at home.

And in the circumstances, given Farage's recent high profile, a Tory vote may have been an anti UKIP vote, but who knows?

Farage interview:

"The problem is that Ukip has become a bit like the other parties: people view it as a means to get elected.”

Although atleast with the other parties there is a fair chance that your dream of mainstream election success could come true.

“I am having a great time,” he said. “I am not having to deal with low-grade people every day. I am not responsible for what our branch secretary in Lower Slaughter said half-cut on Twitter last night – that isn’t my fault any more

I've lost track - is Farage now elite or anti elite?

I don’t have to go to eight-hour party executive meetings.

Imagine! Working for 8 hours! Poor love.

www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/dec/09/nigel-farage-scathing-attack-ukip-low-grade-people

Guardian summary as Telegraph interview is premium.

lalalonglegs that could be right. I am speculating, but its something being offered and we should take note of it and I don't think it should be ignored outright as there is definitely merit to the idea and we should explore it and how it could work in practise. Certainly it might put pay to those leavers screaming its not fair that UK citizens in the EU are 'bargaining chips' and criticising the EU for it.

WT re: Sleaford v Richmond, in order for an anti-Brexit backlash to occur, I think the way in which the constituency voted at the last general election has to be out of step with the way in which it voted in the referendum or a reversion to 2010 patterns.

In the case of Richmond, it had a Tory Pro-Brexit MP in a very heavily remain area which was previously Liberal Democrat. (Mixed with the effect of by-election turnout quirks).

A backlash is effectively nothing more than a realigning on party political lines to one that better matches the position of that party with regard to the referendum or has a regression back to a historical pattern rather than something that is wildly unexpected or totally unpredictable.

In this context you need to see UKIP and the Conservatives as pro-Brexit authoritarians on one side, against the two more liberal approaches of Labour and the Lib Dems on the other side, with Labour perhaps fitting with more reluctant remainers or people who view other issues more important and the Lib Dems the preserve of more actively pro-Europeans.

Richmond had much more scope of a 'backlash' because the constituency pattern as a whole didn't fit well along these lines and with the way it voted in 2015. Whereas Sleaford did, meaning a backlash was always much less likely.

What is curious with Sleaford is that the UKIP and Conservative share of the vote combined come out at 63% and the Leave Vote was 62%. It could be a coincidence but I'm not hugely surprised as it just shows how the alignment works. And this is why there was much more of a shift in Richmond because it wasn't aligned.

Of course not every voter will switch if they are say a Conservative Remainer or a Labour Leaver but the closer voters are to their party's political line on Brexit the less likely they are to switch allegiance.

The performance of the LDs in Sleaford, isn't necessarily out of line with Lib Dems who switched to the Conservatives between 2010 and 2015 reverting back.

As far as I am concerned Richmond behaved more or less how I thought it might and so did Sleaford. I never thought there would be a backlash every where - they will only happen in places where the conditions are right for it.

For me the interesting bit about Sleaford is precisely what didn't happen there, and that UKIP didn't manage to jump out of their core leave grouping and attract leavers from the other two leave demographics as much as they wanted. Which suggests there is a ceiling to their appeal that's lower than their hot air betrays. (Conservatives might be more relaxed about UKIP but more concerned about the Lib Dems from the other side).

qpol.qub.ac.uk/public-opinion-challenge-ni/
Northern Ireland: the challenge of public opinion
Professors John Coakley and John Garry share the results from a major new survey into how the Northern Ireland electorate voted at the recent UK referendum on EU membership.

A more fundamental line of division separated Northern Ireland from Great Britain. When we look at religious background, its role in explaining different attitudes towards Brexit is obvious: 85% of Catholics supported ‘remain’, but only 41% of Protestants did so (with 59% supporting Brexit). There were similar differences in other, overlapping, areas of division: 88% of those describing themselves as Irish supported ‘remain’, but only 38% of those describing themselves as British took this position (with ‘Northern Irish’ identifiers in between, at 64%). Among those describing themselves as ‘nationalist’, similarly, 89% supported ‘remain’, a position adopted only by 35% who described themselves as ‘unionist’ (with those opting for ‘neither’ coming in the middle, at 70%).

and

Since community background is so important in explaining other aspects of political behaviour in Northern Ireland, it is not altogether surprising that it looms so large in respect of the Brexit issue too. It is nevertheless puzzling. There are no particular reasons for expecting Protestants to fare better than Catholics if the UK leaves the EU; the main implications lie in the areas of economy, society and demography. The bonds that currently tie London to Brussels are not highly visible in Northern Ireland, and it is not clear that whatever political gains Brexit might bring to London will pay dividends in Northern Ireland.

On the contrary, Brexit has re-opened the question of the Irish border and has the potential to undermine the finely balanced settlement that has brought peace to Northern Ireland over the past two decades. The data in the survey discussed here, however, show just how divided public opinion in Northern Ireland is on Brexit, and political leaders have to take account of this.

The future of all-Ireland discussions may well depend on the manner in which public opinion in Northern Ireland shifts as the full implications of Brexit become clearer.

From that Guardian summary:
Farage suggested one role he could potentially play for Trump was a Middle East peace negotiator. “I’m not suggesting that I can do everything, but I do think that I’m quite good at negotiating. I’m quite good at bringing people together,” he said.

Awesome. Farage and Trump's son in law as the new Middle East dream team. Can't see any potential problems there.

It will be interesting to see if any of the tabloids pick up on those Farage comments. You would think that if they got any play in the Sun or Express, they would not get a great reception (unlike DT readers, who would never consider themselves to be low-grade!).

I’m quite good at bringing people together

I think he is more suited to a career in stand up comedy.

Oh, he is quite good at bringing people together. It's just uniting them in the belief that he's a colossal wanker.

For me also what is interesting about the Sleaford vote is what didn't happen and that there wasn't a large swing to the Lib Dems.

In reply to merry mouse's point, many voters at many elections vote for candidates who have no hope of winning. I've probably done so more times than I've voted thinking there was a chance my vote would make any difference to the outcome. There is also a tradition of the protest vote. Indeed, many people would have us believe that many leave votes were protest votes (I don't believe it myself).

Even ignoring the referendum, it's just not the case that people won't vote for someone with no hope of winning.

It is obviously very complicated and I am not suggesting that any huge conclusions can be drawn except that, perhaps, the remain voters in Sleaford (and any converts to remain since the referendum) did not feel sufficiently strongly about Brexit and the government's handling of it, to cast a "protest" Lib Dem vote. This does not surprise me, but it is slightly at odds with the picture that some are trying to paint, esp after Richmond Park, that the route the gov are pursuing, EU wise, is hugely out of step with public opinion.

I laughed out loud at the thought of Farage solving the Middle East situation. Far, far greater minds than him have failed.

I laughed out loud at the thought of Farage solving the Middle East situation.

Me too, but it's Friday night and I'm well into the Amaretto, so I wasn't quite sure if it was actually funny or if I'm just tipsy!!