Westminstenders: Pah International Law. Who needs it?

[RedToothBrush]

I mean its not as if trade deals and human rights are relevant is it?

(sorry eating my dinner so must be brief)

My loathsome MP has actually replied to my letter re the IMB and breaking International Law. This is a step up from previously failing to reply to letters including on prorogation. Unfortunately it says the following - any suggestions of how to reply on key points welcomed!

^Thank you for your email about international law and the UK Internal Market Bill.

I have noted the points you make and would comment as follows:

There has been much speculation about the Government’s commitment to treaty obligations and international law. However, I believe that some of the commentary has misrepresented the situation. It goes without saying that my ministerial colleagues and I are committed to the rule of law as determined by a democratically elected Parliament.

The UK Internal Market Bill is fundamentally about protecting the integrity of the United Kingdom. The Prime Minister made this clear when he introduced the Bill in the House of Commons. The Bill will support the provision of more powers for all parts of the UK and ensure that businesses can continue to trade seamlessly across the UK – just as they have done for hundreds of years. As we recover from the Coronavirus pandemic, it will also help to protect jobs and support our economic recovery.

With regard to the provisions on the Northern Ireland Protocol which much as been made of, you should know that the Protocol contains inconsistencies that the UK and EU had intended to resolve by the end of the year. The end of the Transition Period is fast approaching, and with no agreement yet reached, the Government has proposed a safety net to protect the Union and ensure that the UK’s obligations under the Belfast Agreement are met. We must deliver on our promises to the people of Northern Ireland and this Bill allows us to do so.

If no action were taken, the default legal position would risk creating barriers to trade within the UK and could threaten the Union. The EU, for instance, has already suggested blocking the transport of food from Great Britain to Northern Ireland. The Government’s proposals make clear this cannot be allowed to happen.

Provisions in the UK Internal Market Bill will ensure, as that Protocol intended, that Northern Ireland is fully part of the UK customs territory by guaranteeing that goods moving within the UK will never pay EU tariffs. They will also ensure that Northern Ireland businesses have unfettered access to the rest of the UK, as per the Protocol, without any paperwork. They finally ensure that while Northern Ireland would remain subject to the EU’s State Aid regime, Great Britain would not.

There is no reason why these provisions should undermine the future relationship negotiations with the EU. I understand the Government is working to ensure that nothing inadvertently compromises the UK and the EU’s shared commitment to the Belfast Agreement and to ensuring that the original intention of the Northern Ireland Protocol is implemented. It is the Government's overriding priority to work within the Withdrawal Agreement Joint Committee to reach a negotiated outcome, but a responsible government must consider fall-back options to ensure that the communities of Northern Ireland are always protected.

It is important to understand that it is not new for Parliament to consider legislation that could override treaty obligations. This is because the UK’s constitutional settlement provides for Parliament alone to decide whether and how to implement the UK’s treaty obligations. You may remember that this principle was upheld by the Supreme Court in the Miller Case on invoking Article 50 in 2017.

Remedying the unintended consequences of the Protocol may breach the Withdrawal Agreement in a limited way but the consequences of inaction could break up the UK. I hope you understand that while I remain fully committed to international law, I have a duty to protect the integrity of the Union – the overriding purpose of this Bill.

I hope that the foregoing comments clarify the rationale behind both my and the Government’s approach to this matter. I will, of course, continue to follow the legislation but, in the meantime, many thanks for taking the trouble to get in touch^

I assume Mo Mowlam is turning in her grave, though clearly most Brexiter politicians have completely forgotten her legacy, since they are so happy to ignore her great achievement. I was going to say, of course, she was a Labour MP so her work on the GFA doesn't count for the present government, but to be fair, Brexit doesn't go along party lines any more. Traditionally, Labour has always been against the EU and the Tory party more or less for it, until Cameron made the most stupid move imaginable in calling the referendum and then left someone else to deal with his massive mistake.

Sorry, that was just a rambling rant. Furious at the up-ending of the GFA. And the rest.

@SunnyUplandsOhNoTurnipSoup snap!

Drunk and mildly amused at the photos.
I am still wondering if there's a way to persuade the SNP to simply take over England. Independence immediately achieved along with massive FU satisfaction on behalf of the Scottish public. Plus, Westminster probably would not notice until the following Wednesday.

It would be refreshing to have an adult politician in charge, again.

Hancock in that first photo obviously saying to himself:
"I'm not here; make it all go away"

Boris Johnson’s campaign to undermine objective truth stops him from being held accountable

https://inews.co.uk/opinion/boris-johnsons-campaign-to-undermine-objective-truth-stops-him-from-being-held-accountable-645900

On 19 October 2019, Boris Johnson told the House of Commons that the deal he had agreed with the EU was “about as perfect as you could get”. It was “excellent”, “great” and “very good for this country”.
There would be no border in the Irish Sea.

Anyone who opposed the deal was standing with the EU over British interests and trying to undermine Brexit.

In the Commons this week, that message was inverted.
The deal was now portrayed as a disaster which had to be dismantled through mechanisms contained in the Internal Market Bill.
The Prime Minister’s spokesperson said it “contains ambiguities, and in key areas there is a lack of clarity”.
There will in fact be a border in the Irish Sea.

Anyone who defends the deal is standing with the EU over British interests and trying to undermine Brexit.
....
What we’re seeing here is not standard-issue political cynicism.
It is something qualitatively different:
a conscious effort to eradicate the notion of objective truth as an operating principle in British political life.

It involves a three-stage process:
the willingness of the Government to produce disinformation,
the undermining of independent fact-checkers who might assess it,
and an audience so blinded by tribalism that they will willingly receive it.
....
As Conservative MP Lee Anderson said on Monday night:
“Members of this House need to decide where their loyalties lie. Is it with the EU or with the United Kingdom?”

Once the tribal viewpoint is secured, people stop looking for the truth and instead seek out that which supports their world view.

.

Excellent article by Fintan O'Toole in the Irish Times [https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/fintan-o-toole-it-is-june-24th-2025-and-brexit-has-worked-1.4356392]

Excerpt:
The chief of the disruptors is Dominic Cummings. For Cummings, Brexit is not primarily about the EU at all. It is a wrecking ball aimed at the British institutions he despises: parliament, the judiciary, the Tory Party, the civil service, the BBC, Oxbridge. He (rightly) perceived that Brexit would radically destabilise his own country. For him, that’s the point.

For all the political chaos it has unleashed, the Brexit project has remained viable because it has been able to keep these three kinds of motivation more or less together. They have overlapped sufficiently.

The Hannan types thought they could use the opportunists to get them to the promised land. Johnson liked the fantasists’ airy scenarios because they saved him the bother of having to have a plan or engage with details. Cummings could justify the disruption by telling himself that a Hannanesque utopia lay just the far side of it.

But two realities have refused to bend themselves to the Brexiteers’ wills. The EU, inexplicably and maliciously, has not seen sense and given Britain a self-renewing supply of free cake. And Ireland has stupidly not left the EU. These actualities have undermined both the fantasist and the opportunist positions.

On the one hand, Hannan and his fellow idealists look increasingly like one those cults that promised the Rapture on a certain date and are devastated to find themselves boringly alive on the same old Earth the next morning.

On the other, Johnson’s opportunism is running out of road. He can’t convince anyone (even himself?) that he believes his own bluster about the “golden age” that is a-coming by and by. The performance is becoming an embarrassment even (perhaps especially) to his own fans.

And that leaves only the disruptor. If you hate almost all of Britain’s institutions in the way Cummings does, the idea of Brexit as the dynamite that will explode under them is not failing.

It is succeeding far beyond expectations. Who would have thought that the prestige of the British state could be brought so low that it could not even manage to honour an international treaty for nine months?
It may be floundering in every other respect, but as a machine for the destruction of what Britain used to mean, Brexit is tearing triumphantly ahead.

Re BigChoc's inews oped: Boris Johnson’s campaign to undermine objective truth stops him from being held accountable

We are truly living in a 1984 world of Newspeak and Doublethink

Although as dh said, when we were discussing the gaslighting going on: at least many but not enough of us have read 1984 and can see what is going on.

And BJ's puppet government is not as efficient or effective as Big Brother, so that's one saving grace And while Cummings has such a low opinion of experts and experience other than him and his band of like minded misfits , hopefully that will stop them becoming as effective

Got to look for positives somewhere

Hancock in that first photo obviously saying to himself: "I'm not here; make it all go away"
Couldn't agree more BCF

Are these photos provided to the Daily Fail or taken by journos? Whichever way they are odd - Hancock looks furious, Johnson looks ill, DC looks (as always) weird.... As pointed out, Gove is not in any. They are not photos you would choose to give a positive image of the inner workings of Government.
How much clout does Sarah Vine have at the Mail?

In that article, O'Toole divides the main Brexit politicians into 3 categories and chooses an example of each

1. Believers, e.g. Hannan

2. Opportunists, e.g. BJ

3)Disrupters, e.g. Cummings

At least they persuaded BJ not to dress up in a white coat or a high vis jacket

He shares the love of dressing up, along with tantrums, that go with being an overgrown toddler

Just realised the link wasn't clickable www.irishtimes.com/opinion/fintan-o-toole-it-is-june-24th-2025-and-brexit-has-worked-1.4356392

Re the 6 photos. Most were taken by Andrew Parsons, a professional photographer. He has been the semi-official photographer to the Tories for many years, responsible for several memorable images of Johnson, eg knocking over a child while pretending to play rugby.

On International Talk Like A Pirate Day I thought I'd share this of the government seeking clarity from an unnamed source on the legal position re WA earlier this week

The late Labour MP & peer Tony Banks:

"Johnson is the kind of man that will laugh and joke with you in the queue ...

as you are marched into the sports stadium to be tortured and shot"

Harding could not see a foreseeable crisis because she has no qualifications for running a public health service in a national emergency. She’s in post because she is a Tory peer and supporter of the governing regime. Far from firing her, ministers have promoted Harding to head their new National Institute for Health Protection. She didn’t apply for the post, she admitted to parliament. The institute is not a meritocracy, whose jobs are filled in open competition. Harding was a political appointee to a role you might think demands specialist knowledge.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/sep/19/meritocracy-dido-harding-rise

PMK with a wonder whether HMG will block me from roasting their posts on Linkedin
but its such fun

Thanks ICouldHaveChecked I'd forgotten about knocking that poor child over 😂 Classic Johnson.

Went to town today...
Not busy.
Never ever seen Lush empty on a Saturday morning before.
Debenhams didn't open til 10.
I wouldn't believe the tales of economic recovery if I were you.
Pretty depressing tbh.

[quote TatianaBis]Harding could not see a foreseeable crisis because she has no qualifications for running a public health service in a national emergency. She’s in post because she is a Tory peer and supporter of the governing regime. Far from firing her, ministers have promoted Harding to head their new National Institute for Health Protection. She didn’t apply for the post, she admitted to parliament. The institute is not a meritocracy, whose jobs are filled in open competition. Harding was a political appointee to a role you might think demands specialist knowledge.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/sep/19/meritocracy-dido-harding-rise[/quote]
...
NIH was supposed to be like the German RKI (Public Health Institute) - which is run by professionals:

RKI President
Prof. Dr. Lothar H. Wieler is a specialist veterinarian for microbiology
and was previously managing director of the Institute for Microbiology and Animal Diseases at the Free University

RKI Vice President
Prof. Dr. Lars Schaade is a specialist in microbiology and infection epidemiology
and previously headed the department “Communicable Diseases, AIDS, Epidemiology” at the Federal Ministry of Health

It's all a bit messed up innit?

The ambition of the hard liners in the trump administration is to destroy the constitution. This potentially gives them the ability to do so now.

The rule of law looks likely to become a casualty of the long running American kulturkampf. The Supreme Court fell victim to political cowardice a long time ago.

The Supreme Court has been used as a proxy for the field of battle in the culture war for many decades now, all because Congress and the Senate are too spineless to provide the political leadership necessary to sit down with the other side to get real work done, its members more concerned with posturing in order to get re-elected, and frankly more likely to be rewarded with re-election in most states if they adopt a hard line and refuse to work with the other side. Important political decisions have been palmed off onto the Court because elected representatives won't stick their necks out and do the work required to keep the political system ticking over.

Events at Westminster over the last seven days demonstrate how quickly an agreement drawn up by the British Government can be cast aside when the going gets rough.

Eerie echoes here of patterns seen in the relationship between Westminster and a former region of the UK almost exactly 100 years ago.