Westminstenders: Supreme Democracy

[RedToothBrush]

Tuesday is the big day about prorogation.

The Supreme Court hears the case of Cherry and Miller against the government.

This could test the constitution and the union. The Supreme Court sits as both as a Scottish Court and and English Court and applies Scottish / English law accordingly. And there are differences. It is possible that prorogation might only be illegal under one or the other but would have effect on parliament. Or its possible that the Supreme Court might decide to uphold the government position.

What is encouraging is the constitutional expert blogs which suggest that they lean to the court intervening. It's important that for the A50 case the Supreme Court referenced the arguments in these blogs.

But let's not get too carried away.

As it is Joe Moor, former director of legislative affairs at 10 Downing Street wrote in today's Telegraph that Johnson could merely prorogue again from Oct 14 "until at least Nov 6" thus preventing parliamentary scrutiny of no deal which would help enable in effect illegally. The Times also reported Cummings as having said this to advisors.

This has been dismissed by legal experts, but the point remains there is a willingness to both frustrate parliament and be as obstructive as possible in the days leading up to 31st.

There is also the 'Nobile Officium' Court action designed to stop illegal no deal by allowing the courts to write a letter to the EU to request an extension of Johnson refuses to.

It remains to be seen if it has even a chance of success.

The British press has been full of comments of optimism for a deal this weekend. This is after there was positive noises in a similar vein from Brussels. These has since been largely dismissed as mere political will with no practical progress. The British optimism has also been dismissed as mere posturing. And Priti Patel "misspoke" when she appeared to suggest that no deal was no policy this morning.

Other rumours include the French willing to grant a 2year extension but not a 3month one out of fear this will happen repeatedly. The French are now pushing for a deal and relaxing their approach as such (but Germany won't compromise the single market and Ireland the GFA so its all talk).

And do not forget, for all the talk of a deal there are certain time restrains.

Apparently Nikki da Costa has a timetable to get a deal through parliament in 'just ten days' on a spreadsheet. So that gives you an idea that the 19th October is possibly the last day to get a deal in front of parliament if you completely accept that we are leaving without any extension. This neglects the issue that a new deal isn't on the table from the EU and the backstop isn't going anywhere.

A last minute deal or no deal situation is highly risky with the ERG on one side and hard core Remainers who think Johnson won't defy the Benn Amendment and thus will try and block a deal to the last

It seems that we will have a game of cat and mouse until the bitter end.

The Justices' ability to make points, crisply and in good English, was a joy to listen to; and their ability to make points, without shouting one another down or even having to catch the President's eye, was a joyful display of good manners.

I was thinking exactly this!

With a typical articulated lorry being about 16.5m long,
a queue of 8,500 such vehicles would stretch for some 150km, the distance from Dover to Guildford in Surrey.

...if they were in a single-lane queue, which they won't be. Presumably that 150km figure isn't in the actual report. ISTR Operation Stack could hold 4000-5000 lorries without any overflow onto the M25 and without the extra capacity they've planned in for Brock.

“One hundred per cent of non-compliant vehicles will be turned away,
which means the resulting flow rate is 29 per cent at Holyhead, Heysham and Liverpool and 32 per cent at Portsmouth.”

There's 1 international ferry a day from Heysham I think, and around 7 from Liverpool. Holyhead has more but we're not talking about hundreds of trucks queuing for days even in a worse-case scenario. The vehicle volumes are a fraction of the Dover route. There appears to be more EU vehicles using those ports than UK vehicles.

This assumption that haulage companies are going to have all their trucks turning up at ports without paperwork is ludicrous. If that happens once to a haulage company it'll be once too often and they'll get it right next time.

It's the sort of thing that does already happen when an inexperienced subcontractor gets a trip outside the EU though, so it is likely to happen a bit during the first few days. I think it'll be unfamiliarity with procedures which causes the expected cumulative delays though, rather than missing paperwork.

calling the Mark Carney Fanclub

Chris Giles @chrisgiles_
Doesn't look likely new BoE governor will be appointed soon

Carney might be asked to extend (yet) again

Oh - and it won't be John Kingman - he never wanted the job

t.co/WJeUDqzDj9 via @financialtimes

I think it'll be unfamiliarity with procedures which causes the expected cumulative delays though, rather than missing paperwork.
But two minutes of delay per lorry is enough to gridlock Kent

and at the inbound side - where will they do clearance at the Tunnel ?

Let alone all the thousands of people in vans who do not realise they will have to do clearance paperwork

4. The French port authorities have said that once the Calais vehicle park is at capacity then inbound ferries will not be allowed to land. That in turn will reduce the capacity available for outbound traffic. Very quickly long queues will build in Northern France. Ironically that should in principle shorten the queues in SE England.

Reposting this. It seems like an important piece of information that hasn't been discussed. Does anyone have any links to what the FR authorities might have said?

"The [BoE] shortlist did not include Gerard Lyons, a Eurosceptic economist and former adviser to Boris Johnson when he was London mayor, who applied for the role."

Hooray; I was worried an ideological Brexshitter would get it
Even better if Carney stays on, we'll need him desperately if it's No Deal

Probably not quite what you want, Misti but does have more quotes from French authorities, also their Brexit "test run" last Thursday:

French check UK-made goods in first Brexit dress rehearsal

https://www.ft.com/content/c430599c-d545-11e9-8367-807ebd53ab77

“If there’s a deal we’ll adjust and it’ll be a little easier.
And if there’s no deal that means Great Britain for us is a market equivalent to South Africa.”

According to the government’s Operation Yellowhammer plan France could potentially impose EU mandatory controls on goods coming into Dover on day one,
cutting the flow of lorries going across the Channel by 40-60 per cent and causing severe disruption for up to three months.
....
“Either the British will stay within the norms because until now they are supposed to manufacture within EU norms,
or they will adopt rules that are much more flexible and then we will inspect them as if they were Chinese or American products
......
They will be rigorously treated in the same manner as a ‘third country’ not in the EU.....
There’s no preferential treatment if it’s a really hard Brexit.”^

With regards evidence in a civil case, it's usually all provided beforehand and both parties have seen it all / agreed the content of the bundle(s) together. You don't get surprise disclosure in Court really.

However, if something came to light, you could take it along and make an Application at the start of that day's proceedings.

Bearing in mind how quickly this hearing was convened, I'd say you'd probably get new evidence in. But you might not!

Noone has mentioned Liz Truss and the Saudi arms deal? They have broken the agreement knowingly!

So proroguing Parliament is unlawful, but nothing can be done about it?
And the same with the government unlawfully issuing arms sales weapons?
So the government can in fact do whatever the hell it likes.

Ahem. If you Google the exact title of articles in the Financial Times you can bypass the paywall. Unless they've fixed it.

The FT is free for 24 hours

With a typical articulated lorry being about 16.5m long,
a queue of 8,500 such vehicles would stretch for some 150km, the distance from Dover to Guildford in Surrey.

A few months ago there were some sort of works going on near me which the Council confirmed were related to Brexit prep in case of tailbacks.

I'm assuming this would be from Southampton which is the closest port to us. We're over an hour's drive from there inland (near Alton, Hampshire).

Sorry, just realised a million people have already mentioned about the FT being free. I think I'll give up on catching up on this thread but have been all over Twitter keeping up to date today...

The problem is not everyone can get the paperwork even when they apply for it.

Figures show more than 11,000 HGV operators applied for a European Conference of Ministers of Transport (ECMT) permit but less than 1,000 of the annual passes were made available.

The Government are not prepared to issue the correct paperwork. You can’t just blame this on the poor businesses.

As an added aside: There’s also the paperwork and new labels (without Eu certs) etc required for goods. The administrative costs of this are not great for business.

They promised us less red tape but businesses are facing much much more red tape.

Sorry that was a reply for FishesaPlenty

excited that's interesting and on reflection obvious. I was wondering what happened to the UK's new CE mark that was discussed years ago - Looked like a heart with SB or something...they had the logo but no actual meat on the bones as to regulation? Anyone know more?

The CE mark will be replaced by a UKCA mark.

Massive costs apparently to move over to the new marks.

Presumably any products being exported will need to have both marks on for the time being to be accepted in the EU(?)

No idea if the Statutory Instrument mentioned has been passed yet.

www.cemarkingassociation.co.uk/ce-marking-after-the-referendum/

I think maybe you're thinking of the British Kitemark - here is an explanation of the difference between the Kitemark and CE mark

www.technologystudent.com/prddes1/kite1.html

TLDR for that link...the Kitemark is a higher set of quality standards whereas the CE mark are minimum standards. UKCA mark will replace CE mark to denote that minimum standards have been passed.

These will be aligned to CE standards on Day One but presumably will / may diverge at some point.

So products at a minimum standard would then have CE and UKCA marks potentially if exporting to EU. Higher standard products could also have a Kitemark.

In reality manufacturers exporting to the EU would need to keep abreast of two sets of regulations (UK & EU) and would be likely to meet whichever the highest spec is as this is likely to be cheaper than having 2 production lines with different specs. Another one of the 'Brexit reduces red tape and costs' myths busted I'm afraid.

So the CE and UKCA will be a straight swap for now presumably, but they will have to clear in law what the new/updated dropped standards are as and when we begin dropping EU regs? The only good thing is the rest of the world will hold us to account and will stop importing if our goods become unsafe - even if they try to change the legalities here in UK it will just mean our products aren't exportable by any country who cares about H&S. That's slim pickings for hope, but i'm sticking with it. We may be stuck here with no incoming trade - or limited - but if companies want to grow and export globally they have to up the ante with regs. Sounds so basic but recently...

I know he's a Remainer and on 'our side' and all that but does anyone else just find Andrew Adonis a bit smug and annoying?

I can't decide what is about his tweets that put me right off him?

Woman bags second place for Jacob Leeks-Mogg at town fayre . Genius.

That Jacob Leeks Mogg was brilliant!

And mojo, it's his smug-looking face to the left of the Tweet!

On the transport front, there is also the issue of pallets. Pallets from non-EU countries have to meet specific standards and not enough of ours do.

I think that there is a decent chance that port chaos has been underestimated, cannot be mitigated, and if the queues don't materialise it will be because the French aren't letting many ferries dock and transporters themselves decide to avoid the U.K.