Westminstenders: "I don't give a flying flamingo"

[RedToothBrush]

Amid scenes parliament was shut down.

In an unprecedented comment the Speaker, stated it was not an ordinary prorogation and it was blatantly an attempt to stop the executive being held to account.

And now it seems a Scottish Court agree with him:
"Lord Brodie cont: "the principal reasons for the prorogation were to prevent or impede parliament holding the executive to account and legislating with regard to Brexit, and to allow the executive to pursue a policy of a no deal Brexit without further parliamentary interference"

Thus parliament must reopen. Unless the decision is overturned in a higher court.

This is constitutionally a big deal. The Queen is highly unlikely to attend a reopening, especially in this manner, due to how political it now is.

General Election campaigning has already began with parties trying to take full advantage of the fact that there are currently no rules over spending.

Dominic Cummings actively and openly campaigning for the Conservatives whilst paid as a civil servant by the tax payer is a huge breech of the Civil service code but MPs are struggling to pin the government down on this as its being obstructive.

Cummings is keen to use data to target and personalise people based on their usage of the .gov portal for Brexit. This is OK as its in the national interest apparently. Its also incredibly sinister and concerning about how this could be used against the population.

Anyway if you thought parliament closing would result in a lull in events you were very much mistaken!!

What next?

Didn’t he send Rees Mogg to do it? I guess he’s technically correct.

Can the Privy Council convene and advise Her Maj differently from the PM? Or advise her to backtrack?
I don’t think BJ lied to Brenda so much as manipulated her.

It's a tricky ole one, isn't it?
There was a former Privy Counsellor on R4 last night indicating when there is any requests from a PM to prorouge, there is no discussion with Maj at the time. However....there surely WILL have been a discussion with Palace advisors and Maj about the issues given the unusual nature of the request. One hopes.

*I’m not sure I agree that is lazy thinking - surely the parking attendant would have typed in your actual reg and it wouldn’t have come up

He can’t be expected to check every possible typo to see if that comes up, especially if it was your input error which caused the problem.

On the face of it it’s more like entitled behaviour in expecting others to make exceptions for your mistakes*

Harsh. If a reg no is ABCD 123 and you've put in ABCD I23 it's not that difficult to work out the difference between 1 and I. There was a case in last week's Times where exactly this scenario had happened, with a O and a 0. The appeal had failed, but once the Times intervened they let it go.

Cherrypi
The phone in frothers often end with the phrase I'm never voting again.
Songsofexperience
To which I say brilliant, thank you!
Alsohuman
Let’s hope they mean it.

Sometimes I have a look at this thread to understand what the 48 per cent are thinking. And then I regret it.

Basilpots

This Govt does not have its populations best interests at heart
(we've had 3 years to negotiate a calm planned exit if we wanted it)

it is also woefully incapable of negotiation or planning of any kind

Not fit for purpose at all.

BlowJob says what he said to the Queen was "Absolutely Not True."

(Think I've got that right.)

Can the Privy Council convene and advise Her Maj differently from the PM? Or advise her to backtrack?

I did ask this a while back, but it seems JRM is in charge of the privy council as Lord President (funny, I always thought it was the Monarch) so would be able to gerrymander the appropriate advisors anyway.

Given there are 600+ members of the council then over time they should represent a fair spread of views.

If I was going to tackle constitutional change as a series of linked small changes, maybe changing the control of the Privy Council would be a good starting point ? Because at the moment we've ended up in a situation where all roads lead to the government - which shuts out the legislature, and allows them to mark their own homework (again).

Quick question - if this had been a "normal" suspension for Conference season, would the HoL and the committees continued working?

And if had been the usual 1-2 weeks for a new Queen's Speech, same question.

I know if there's an election you have wash-up* etc but when it's the same government they carry legislation across.

*Scottish court judgment also upsetting people for very different reason - talking of "minor" bills, one of those "minor" bills being the one about domestic violence!

Incidentally, has anyone commented on the trolling of someone, somewhere in deciding to christen the operation "Yellowhammer" ?

Yes - about a gazillion threads back, when Yellowhammer first came to light

berlinbaby suspension for conference would be a recess (like the summer holiday recess) rather than a prorogation.

Select Committees can continue to meet during recess but nor during prorogation.

Similarly, bills do not fall during a recess but they do fall during a prorogation. So, had it been the normal conference recess, then the domestic violence bill would not have fallen.

Sorry, typo, select committees do not meet during prorogation.

God. I'm watching Peter Taylor's autobiographical account of covering the Troubles.

I think I'd blotted from my mind how awful it was. This is taking me right back. A parent carrying the tiny coffin of their child killed in his pram. Bombs exploding in streets full of shoppers. Whole town centres looking like images from WW2 blitzes. The rhetoric of hate dressed as righteousness. The endless cycle of ceasefire, breakdown, ceasefire, breakdown, hope, talks, breakdown.

I was lucky enough not to be living in NI amid it all. On the mainland another half-dozen murders by terrorists usually got just one day's headline, and was just one item before moving onto the rest of the news. Except when they bombed England, of course.

Any of you clever lot heard about Black Swan. Apparently that is the name for the document that contains the real worst case scenarios and not the base case scenarios in Yellowhammer.

Bravo SM is a necessary condition for frictionless trade BUT not for frictionless import of meds

An FTA that is not SM / CU will be shit for our balance of trade, but can still avoid the ports being logjammed

One of the many problems with No Deal is that um, there is No Deal whatsoeever with the EU, just lot of loose ends and EU unilateral transition arrangements that they can stop any time

I'm not clever but I have heard about Black Swan.
Thing is, you expect this sort of info to be a live document updated daily as stuff is achieved or not achieved and other issues identified.

"Do I trust this Government has the capabilities to negotiate its way through a no deal Brexit with it’s populations best interest at heart ?"

The question is do you trust them after No Deal, when there are no legal constraints on what they try to negotiate ?

The EU will insist on the main WA terms as as prerequisites before starting trade talks
So we would have several months of the govt holding out, before negotiations even start

Then instead of the negotiations being conducted while the UK is in transition, with frictionless trade, EURATOM etc as now,
we'd be negotiating with the ports logjammed, shortages, the economy crashing, Sterling crashing ....
basically in a state of emergency and panic

Totally different circumstances between negotiating after an orderly exit and negotiating while falling off a cliff
I think people keep overlooking that.

Passing the WA at least gives a minimum base for a "level playing field" that the EU insisted on to prevent the UK undercutting them by dumping all the laws on workers rights, consumer rights, the environment etc

That's why the vulture capitalists in the ERG hate the WA so much; many keep saying there are 40 reasons in addition to the backstop

• those are all about restricting the UK govt from making it a race to the bottom, to attract business

I saw somewhere - was it here? - that Boris Johnson vomited when he read Black Swan.

Is Black Swan real? Is there any evidence for its existence? Rumours on Twitter that it contains plans for rationing and martial law

Politically, things change once the WA is passed:

• It turns down the heat and fury of some of those who want the referendum result to be carried out
  It stops the flow of Labour Leave votes to Tories & BXP and so helps the chances of defeating the hard right.
  The batshit Brexiters will still be furious, but many Leavers will calm down

• The Brexiters become divided between those who want No Deal and those who want an SM / CU Brexit
  including an influx of Unionists - both Tory & NI - who desperately want to avoid the backstop being invoked

• It stops the split between hardcore Remainer and moderates opposing No Deal and the hard right.
  Blairite Remainer MPs would no longer concentrate on stopping the WA at all costs and attacking everyone who would accept it
  We had the situation on these threads too, that pp were praising the DUP for stopping the WA - madness

Yes it was on here about the PM vomiting on reading Black Swan.

Been comparing lots of things in my head between Trump and Johnson. Eg "rich London remainers" a comment for a small sector of voters targeted to "swing it" etc. Which led me on to thinking of all those Trump supporters stating they're not bothered about Trump's worst excesses "because everybody breaks the law" so it's fine for the President to do so. With Johnson, presumably, it will be similar with his lying. And breaking the law.

It's not as simple as 'Blairite' Labour MPs trying to stop The WA, BigChoc.

It's a lot more fragmentary than that.

It's a small point, and possibly off-point - but it matters because it's one factor in the lack of coherent centres in UK politics - which is a major factor in this crisis.