The government is dismissing the parliament not because they want to solicit the voters' input in the form of new elections, but rather because they want to shut down the voters' objections against the no-deal Brexit (which arguably wasn't even on the ballot in the first place!) and paralyze the parliament until they can't prevent it anymore.
And expecting journalists or historians not to draw comparisons across successful or attempted end runs around a relatively democratic system is a little strange.
The ballot: "Leave" or "remain". "The government will implement what you decide"
The government must be able to keep all options on the table, including no-deal, to get a good deal.
If you have to take a job, and don't have the option of walking away, your employer will give you the worst deal possible.
And then the leave voters believed the BS about the NHS too. The Referendum was ill posed and the voters were ill-informed, mostly through the fault of the government, the Leave Campaign, Billionaire donors and even Putin's involvement.
A no deal must be possible to get a deal. Likewise the EU wants to sell its dairy, prosecco, and cars to the UK but wouldn't dream of accepting a terrible deal for the EU. It's possible the a punitive EU might sacrifice the EU and UK economy by refusing to provide a deal for a few months until the pain becomes too much. UK needs to plan for that.
> the BS about the NHS too.
The UK does send 300M to the EU. We get 150M back to spend as the EU desires, the rest is used by the EU outside the UK. Nobody disputes that, it depends whether you think it's OK that we get half it back, or that it's not OK the EU determines how we spend our money.
---
Edit: rate limited, but to reply to the person below:
> Apparently some people flag/down-vote me because they don't like the facts.
Complaining about moderation should be done via email to thee admins and not comments per the HN guidelines. But OK, let's go through your facts.
> It's a fact that many Leave Voters did not expect a no-deal under any circumstances.
Yep agreed. It still needs to be on the table, as it does from the EU side.
> Even the excuse that they need that option to get a deal presupposes that they don't want a no-deal and don't expect it to happen.
Yep agreed. Long term I don't think the EU or the UK wants mutually assured destruction.
> The scenario of the EU trying to "torture" the UK with a few month of third-country status is even more absurd
It's consistent with some of the angrier statements from Jean Claude Juncker and other EU leaders.
> because that presupposes that the EU has no significant disadvantages from withholding a deal
Agreed, the EU has significant disadvantages from withholding a deal. That does not mean the EU will behave rationally or put the EUs (the organisation) self interest ahead of EU member states who wish to keep selling their product in one of the world's largest markets.
> rendering the "leverage" of the no-deal option void.
That doesn't follow. The EU wouldn't agree to a deal that harmed the EU, so they'd also prefer WTO if that was all Britain offered. Likewise the opposite.
> And even then this argument is still wrong: There is no requirement for a no-deal option to have lots of leverage in the negotiation
Why? How can you negotiate a desirable outcome if you cannot walk away and must agree to any deal offered?
> and even with the no-deal on the table the UK didn't get anywhere near the deal they wanted, proving the leave-campaign to be extremely naive or outright liers.
Is that determined yet? Negotiation is still ongoing.
> And no, the leave-campaign never acknowledged or promoted, before the referendum, that the UK is getting half of it back.
Yep agreed.
> They explicitly stated, time and time again "let's put that money into the NHS". Which was impossible back then and oh, look! it's still not possible today.
It would be possible to put the entire 300M into to the NHS, as the UK would control how the money is spent. But it would not be desirable to.
> But Putin, who also financed and supported the leave campaign, likes all those options.
Is this is a fact?
About Russian interference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_the_20...
It's really strange that some people want to push through a catastrophic brexit against the current will of the majority for "nationalistic" reasons and to strengthen the UK, but they don't have a problem that Putin clearly wanted this to happen.
Do these people really think Putin wants Brexit because it's good for the UK?
The fact that we're giving 150M to other countries that doesn't come back to us prevents it.
The biggest issue with Leave.EU found by the Electoral Commission was around spending limits. Wikipedia isn't a reference, but because I'm lazy:
> On 19 July 2019, this was quashed by the High Court as the fine given by the Electoral Commission was found to be erroneous of fact, erroneous of law and was perversely unreasonable by the test of Wednesbury unreasonableness.
And even the 150m is at best misleading, because the EU is spending the money in the common interest of all member states. Disparities in the common market are not to the UK's benefit. And Britain already got a remarkably good deal on those costs because of all the whining.
The next deal, in 10-20 years when the changed demographic is begging for reentry in the EU will be a lot less favorable and maybe the UK actually has to pay its fair share of the burden?
The scenario of the EU trying to "torture" the UK with a few month of third-country status is even more absurd, because that presupposes that the EU has no significant disadvantages from withholding a deal, rendering the "leverage" of the no-deal option void.
And even then this argument is still wrong: There is no requirement for a no-deal option to have lots of leverage in the negotiation, and even with the no-deal on the table the UK didn't get anywhere near the deal they wanted, proving the leave-campaign to be extremely naive or outright liers.
And no, the leave-campaign never acknowledged or promoted, before the referendum, that the UK is getting half of it back. They explicitly stated, time and time again "let's put that money into the NHS". Which was impossible back then and oh, look! it's still not possible today. By my standards that's clearly a lie.
But Putin, who also financed and supported the leave campaign, likes all those options. Total Chaos in No-deal Brexit is probably his favorite option, though.
Also, they're not dismissing parliament, but suspending it.
The voters now have a lot more information. They know the NHS claims were lies. They know which billionaires funded Leave. They know Putin had a hand in it. They know that the EU won't agree to the pie-in-the-sky one sided fairy-deal the Leave-voters have been promised for a few years now.
Why not hold a new referendum with more information and more precise choices?
The UK government doesn't have any of its ducks in a row, deal or no deal. They almost certainly will have a recession, they will almost certainly lose a good chunk of their financial industry. It's just a fact of life if you are on an island and suddenly choke your ports.
The alternative to virtually closing those ports (for lack of resources in screening) is to do no screening and just accept the EU standards. Now without having a say in those standards. Good luck...
That said, I agree with you that Parliament doesn't seem capable of much. Personally I think too many MPs are caught up in their own importance and should have recognised the need for something like citizens' assemblies long ago. If Macron can organise them after some protests why are we still stuck where we were three years ago?
Be careful of Channel 4 in general, it's not unusual they'd omit something like this from a fact check.
Of course, it's also absurd that Parliament has carried on with its usual summer and conference recesses as if nothing important is happening.
I agree that it's not a Reichstag fire situation. For American readers the closest analogy is probably with FDR's court packing plan: within the law, but an attempt to end-run another branch of government and take its power away.
Nevertheless, opponents (including within his own party) saw that as corrosive to good government and stopped it. I think they were right to do so. The line between that (and the Johnson situation) and the 'soft authoritarian' democracies with executive-dominated institutions is not all that wide.
Although its not a phrase associated with Westminster (its more closely associated with former Dominions when they became self governing) it might be better described as 'responsible government' ie the government is held responsible by Parliament.
This tension between Parliament and the Crown has been a part of the UK's (and before that, England's) constitutional settlement since Magna Carta in 1215, and arguably before that.
You're absolutely right that Parliament hasn't governed directly for a long time (arguably not since the civil war, and that was itself a highly unusual period where some questionable constitutional innovations happened). It's also the case that the question of whether the Crown can govern without constraint from Parliament has been settled in principle for centuries: it can't. The Commons has had to repeatedly assert this over the years, and it looks like they're going to do so again.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prorogation_in_the_United_King...
Suggests instead it was 1997 and preceded a GE, prior to that it was 1948, then once in the 1800s and once by King Charles.
Doesn't sounds so terribly common. Why are you trying to mislead people?
It's not clear what people who want to overturn the referendum would do in those four days that they couldn't do in the previous three years.
I supported Remain (here's me on HN trying to get support for Stronger In back in 2016) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11952724), but something like a million more people voted leave.
Comparing attempts to implement the referendum outcome to Hitler or Erdogan is bizarre and clickbaity. Flagged.