They explicitly side-stepped the motive of why Johnson prorogued Parliament. From page 2 of the summary (https://www.supremecourt.uk/cases/docs/uksc-2019-0192-summar...):
> For present purposes, the relevant limit on the power to prorogue is this: that a decision to prorogue (or advise the monarch to prorogue) will be unlawful if the prorogation has the effect of frustrating or preventing, without reasonable justification, the ability of Parliament to carry out its constitutional functions as a legislature and as the body responsible for the supervision of the executive. In judging any justification which might be put forward, the court must of course be sensitive to the responsibilities and experience of the Prime Minister and proceed with appropriate caution. > If the prorogation does have that effect, without reasonable justification, there is no need for the court to consider whether the Prime Minister’s motive or purpose was unlawful.
Also:
> * MPs voted down the current deal 4 times but EU won't change that deal
The EU is happy to change the deal if the UK government proposes something reasonable. But it will not back down from its red lines which is the integrity of the single market and solidarity with Ireland, which is a member state.
It's a sad indictment on my country that the EU seems to care more about the Good Friday agreement than what seems like a majority of the current Johnson backing Conservative MPs (and I'm not even sure about Labour).
They did not. The part you quoting actually explains that this is the case. The court has to identify whether the justification is reasonable (if you followed the case in Scotland, the logic was exactly the same), and this means looking at motive (just to say, constitutional law in the UK does not work like the US...at all).
I did not imply that the EU should do anything. Again, this is a common misunderstanding of the govt's position. The point of their strategy isn't to force the EU into doing anything (although that is the effect). The point is to stop the delay (the effect on the economy has been huge).
Yes. You can see every time a pro-Brexit news event happens the pound falls and an anti-Brexit one happens it ticks up again, like today. The effect of no-deal will be even bigger, as a number of businesses which have been hanging on will be forced to close or relocate.
The default way out of this has to be to revoke, until such time as someone can get elected with a majority of MPs supporting a workable plan.
For most businesses, it won't make a tremendous difference. Imports are becoming more expensive but this is something that likely would have occurred anyway because of weak competitiveness/low savings rate.
Exporters are probably going to come out even or ahead (the change in the £ has offset tariffs).
The situation at the border is somewhat concerning (although only worth 1-2% of GDP in most studies) but has also been distinctly complicated by the switch from CDS to CHIEF (which was supposed to happen years ago but didn't). We could get this right, unf we have got to the point where we are choosing not to.
The main concern for the UK economy is actually supply. The labour market is very tight, unemployment is the lowest it has been for four decades or so, wages are growing like crazy, and we have had deflationary effect due to the delay (which has crushed investment) but, at some point, this is going to come back and there is no spare capacity.
It would be a sweet relief for the marginal, low-productivity businesses that are suffocating the economy to fold (the reason we have low productivity and tight labour is because too many people do jobs that are unproductive, these businesses will not give up resources willingly).
The other approach would be to encourage staff from overseas, which the government has spent years discouraging and has now specifically chosen to make harder for Europeans.
> We could get this right, unf we have got to the point where we are choosing not to.
This has systematically been the Brexit approach.
> They did not.
The way I read it is that they decided that the _effect_ (preventing parliament from performing its constitutional role) of prorogation was unlawful, and therefore Johnson's motive was irrelevant.
Whilst I enjoy watching the mental gymnastics that other people go to on Brexit (I voted to Remain btw), it is utterly self-defeating. Just read something, try to stop your brain jumping in..."reasonable justification"...it doesn't need to be more complicated than that.
This would be more obvious if more people actually followed the primary sources rather than journalists btw. In Scotland, there was a whole thing about getting emails, etc. This has no other purpose than examining motive.
The government's originally stated aim of the prorogation, was that it was a standard mechanism prior to a queen's speech.
The court has taken the opinion that the real aim of this prorogation was instead to restrict parliamentary debate of the Brexit process and that this is unlawful.
Looking at historic prorogation lengths (https://researchbriefings.parliament.uk/ResearchBriefing/Sum...) we can see that "Between 1930 and 2017, the mean average was about 5 calendar days, a median average of about 4 calendar days.", so it's clear that this prorogation was considerably longer than usual.
Your suggestion then that there's nothing out of the ordinary, seems unlikely to hold and indeed the government's own lawyers didn't even try that line of argument during the case, as far as I'm aware.
To quote https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-49722087
'Lord Keen said previous prorogations of Parliament - including in 1930 and 1948 - had "clearly been employed" when governments wanted to "pursue a particular political objective", adding: "They are entitled to do so."'
so the government was arguing a) that the matter was not one for the courts and b) that even if it was, the government was entitled to use prorogation for political ends.
I'm actually mildly surprised that b) didn't hold. allowing a) would have set a very dangerous precedent.
They explicitly didn't do this:
> We are not concerned with the Prime Minister’s motive in doing what he did. We are concerned with whether there was a reason for him to do it
> It is impossible for us to conclude, on the evidence which has been put before us, that there was any reason - let alone a good reason - to advise Her Majesty to prorogue Parliament for five weeks, from 9th or 12th September until 14th October. We cannot speculate, in the absence of further evidence, upon what such reasons might have been. It follows that the decision was unlawful.
They didn't conclude anything specific about why the PM did it; they concluded that no reason was given.
Sure they will. They just need the UK to bring some proposed changes. To date, they haven't.
The Republic of Ireland (or at least their political leadership) seem to interpret the agreement differently, and insist that the Good Friday Agreement means that all laws relating to trade or commerce must be exactly the same in both NI and the RoI (they cite some provisions on the 'all island economy' in support of this).
Equally the unionists believe that the May Withdrawal Agreement breaches the GFA for different reasons - because the GFA acknowledges UK sovereignty over NI and says that this shouldn't be changed without a border poll (which the unionists would likely win still).
In practice anything which stops people crossing the border without let or hindrance will be treated by the Republicans as an abrogation of the intent of the GFA.
This isn't widely understood, I think.
The nationalists will treat it as a symbol, and there will likley be violence associated with any border checks.
If we can keep these away from the border, it would be better, but not sure how you prevent smuggling in that kind of environment.
As I mentioned, the much bigger issue is regulatory alignment more generally for reasons which are not related to border infrastructure (North-South cooperation and the all island economy), where there is a much bigger gap between the sides.
The reason we are in this situation is because the UK essentially agreed to everything the EU wanted, and MPs voted it down. That is democracy.
Johnson's approach is to say: we need to leave. The EU has red lines, that is fine, we will try to come to whatever agreement is possible but if no agreement is found then we will just get on with it.
Your argument is that Brexit cannot happen because it is impossible. That is fine. But the UK voted for Brexit, Parliament voted for Brexit, and Brexit parties won a general election (and there is no Remain majority). So the solution is equally not to ignore voters.
There's a majority in the UK that wants to live the EU, but there's no majority agreeing on where to go from there. That's why this referendum was mindbogglingly stupid to begin with, you can't give the people a choice if you're not prepared to handle both outcomes. What's next, a referendum for "social security for all and basic income and no taxes, also free candy. Yes or no?" Of course the people is sovereign, but democracy can't trump reality. How can you live the UK without hard border with Ireland? This wasn't even a topic at the time of the referendum as I recall.
David Cameron made one of the biggest political errors in modern history here.
But I would say that Johnson is the only one who has actually recognised the difficulty. His starting point, unfortunately three years down the line and after the deal was voted down four times, is to say that this is really difficult and the priority is to do what is possible, not constantly try to rework the fundamentally impossible.
I think it is worth going over the history leading up to Cameron calling the referendum. As always, as with austerity, people read back from the present and assume that all the information was available then. Cameron was facing down a pretty significant rebellion (as it turned out people really didn't like the EU), and he thought he could appease this group with a deal from the EU. The mistake wasn't the referendum but his delusion that the EU would him something useful (this isn't to blame the EU, merely to observe that is was politically impossible for them to do so).
Boy, that's richer than mum's trifle, considering that Boris "£350 million for the NHS" Johnson threw his weight behind the whole sorry endeavour in the first place, while fully half the population voted against it. I think it's pretty fair to say that the difficulty has been obvious to vast swathes of people since the very beginning.
What.
"I'm not anti EU, I'm pro independence"?
From this perspective the people who are against Brexit are inherently against change, or fear of the unknown, and pro Brexiteers are fighting to own their own laws.
I'm not saying this is or isn't my opinion, but your opening presumption is flawed.
If you were to find something unifying the Brexit mindset, something that would unify Brexiteers as a whole, what would it be?
"Pro-independance" doesn't work because that's simply too vague. As we've seen over the past couple of years there's no agreement on what an independent UK would look like. What unifies the Brexiteers is the rejection of the European Union, they don't seem to adhere to any constructive project as a whole. And to be clear that's not to say that they're not individually constructive, just that there's no constructive consensus among this majority.
We may live in different regions or have had different conversations, but the trend in conversations I've had in the North across all age groups seems to be rejection of the EU because they're holding us back. The last part is key, because it's not destructive, it's wanting to be constructive but not being able to. Some (most? I don't know) Brexiteers don't hate the EU, they just think we can be a better nation without them.
Either way, I just don't think you can break it down to constructive and destructive mindsets. My argument is that those are entirely subjective depending on your viewpoint (leave/remain) anyway.
By asking people to have a voice instead of deciding for them??
Direct democracy can work very well - just look at Switzerland, which is the envy of the world when it comes to governance. It may/may not be scalable, but important decisions like EU membership should be decided by the people, not the elite.
You are right that Switzerland has a long history of direct democracy. But the reason it works at all is that people vote whether to accept specific proposals that have already been drawn up.
This was the biggest flaw in the Brexit referendum. As formulated, it was way too woolly and covered a wide range of possible plans.
At which point, some rabid Brexiteer chimes in and says "No, Brexit was very clearly defined as ... ", and then proceeds to reel off their pet opinions-as-facts. QED.
The question posed was simply "Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?"
No implementation details, no specifics, no timeline, and not binding. In the Swiss model, you'd have subsequent direct votes on specific plans once decided upon. (Citizens need only garner 50k signatures to force a vote for/against the specific law implementing a deal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optional_referendum)
Right now, they'd be voting on "given our inability to strike a deal, should we take a no-deal exit?", which I don't think anyone can really argue would get the same 52% the more general Brexit referendum did.
This is a flawed assumption. The EU referendum absolutely was an exercise in direct democracy. Nowhere does it say that direct democracy requires a specific set of questions to be asked.
Breakup from the EU is so complex that we could not have prepared for it enough to know the ramifications of any options. Politics does not work like that and neither does life.
You're making it sound as if deciding what to do with the Irish border is some super intricate detail that nobody could anticipate. Enforcing borders (for immigration) was probably the #1 talking point during the referendum campaign, yet it turns out that nobody knows how to actually implement it.
I agree that the referendum was, de facto, an exercise in direct democracy. Yet it's also pretty clear that it failed to capture exactly the will of the people because there doesn't seem to be a majority behind any concrete proposal for leaving the union.
The problem is no govt. has the ability to set this all up within six weeks and is what they should've been doing these past three years rather than endlessly bike-shedding the little things and ignoring the biggest issues at hand...
Legitimate traffic which is the vast majority will have to go over official channels anyway, so it's feasible that moving goods across the border could be as simple as registering your vehicle and declaring the contents.
It's not perfect, but the alternatives are much worse.
Not in the slightest. It was explicitly non-binding on a legal level. It was fundamentally an opinion poll with a large sample size.
> Breakup from the EU is so complex that we could not have prepared for it enough to know the ramifications of any options.
Perhaps, but that's why the people have elected representatives, who are very clearly saying the no-deal approach isn't acceptable.
Claiming the Brexit referendum gives the PM the right to do anything he wants is silly. It's like claiming "we should fund the NHS" is carte blanche to have the NHS euthanize everyone under 40 because "the people approved the funding".
The spirit of the referendum, legally binding or not, is direct democracy in action. Regardless of what you believe, it would be a travesty to ignore the will of the people, hard as it may be to carry out their command to leave the EU.
> Claiming the Brexit referendum gives the PM the right to do anything he wants is silly. It's like claiming "we should fund the NHS" is carte blanche to have the NHS euthanize everyone under 40 because "the people approved the funding".
Now if you believe the referendum was just 'an opinion poll', and no deal is also by far the most popular option right now[0]: Even if you disagree with it, Boris trying to push no deal is legitimate if you accept the referendum is legitimate.
[0] https://whatukthinks.org/eu/questions/is-the-conservative-pa...
I think you've accidentally linked to a poll of just Conservative party members or something along those lines. Here's the corresponding poll of Labour members: https://whatukthinks.org/eu/questions/is-the-labour-partys-v...
and Lib Dems: https://whatukthinks.org/eu/questions/is-the-liberal-democra...
A better set of polls appears to be here, with 77 polls instead of two, and across the entire populace instead of individual parties. Remain's beating Leave at the moment (and has been consistently). Since you're interested in the Will of the People, here you go:
https://whatukthinks.org/eu/questions/if-a-second-eu-referen...
Why not? Losers consent is a part of democracy and life. However I will admit I cited a poor source, it was not my intention to be deceptive.
The thing is, the will of the people is what the referendum said at the time, nothing else. If it's changed, so be it, but the first result must be implemented first.
> If there was another referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU, how would you vote?
The question is also extremely suspect. It's not asking what the current opinion is, it's saying if we do it all again. These are different. It'd be great if all votes could be done with the benefit of hindsight, but to my knowledge nobody has invented a time machine yet.
Oh, come on. When Labour wins an election the entire Tory party doesn't switch over to their side of things. Arguing that Remain has dropped to 4-6% of the populace is not reasonable.
> The thing is, the will of the people is what the referendum said at the time, nothing else.
What law established this? This is particularly disingenuous given the explicitly non-binding nature of the first referendum.
You were perfectly happy to cite current opinion polls when you thought they supported your will of the people argument.
> It'd be great if all votes could be done with the benefit of hindsight, but to my knowledge nobody has invented a time machine yet.
A second referendum can absolutely be done with hindsight. "Gee, that didn't go well."
Losers consent in the case you mentioned is that Labour accept the Tory government as legitimate. The difference is a referendum is supposed to be final (and it was indeed sold as so), but with an election the opposition will get elected again someday. The proper thing for Labour to do right now is push for the best deal they can to minimise what they believe is a bad decision. It should not be to try as hard as possible to do anything but Brexit.
> What law established this? This is particularly disingenuous given the explicitly non-binding nature of the first referendum.
No law established this, but given our unwritten constitution, can we really be certain that it's legal to ignore a referendum without court scrutiny (which has a divided opinion here btw)? The ballet paper literally said "The government will implement your decision" - I think it's fair to say if it has all the features/promises/legitimacy of a vote, it's a vote.
> You were perfectly happy to cite current opinion polls when you thought they supported your will of the people argument.
I was responding to your argument that a referendum is basically a poll (which I disagreed with anyway).
> A second referendum can absolutely be done with hindsight. "Gee, that didn't go well."
I'm not a fan of second referendum. I'm asking you honestly here, if it was remain won by 4%, and leavers were complaining for 3 years, would you call it legitimate to have another referendum so soon? Of course not, they'd be accused of being undemocratic and I believe they're right.
Regardless of your intent, this specifically argues that we should implement a decision made by people who since have more information and have changed their minds. That is emphatically not a good position.
This is why we generally (mildly facetious) are governed by learned adults, and not children frozen in time. The ability to change opinions is what helps us and society to evolve.
It's the same reason we go to a doctor when we're sick or to an architect when we want to design a house: we go to someone whose job is to know how to do something properly.
In the Swiss model you'll never find single, completely vague and as wide-reaching questions like the one that lead to brexit.
Interestingly, one recent case where it was _not_ well-specified or not well-thought-out caused a bit of a crisis, and in effect lead to the government fudging a non-solution. This case also involved the EU: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Swiss_immigration_initiat...
This is explicitly false, as the normal proroguing is 1 week, not 5 weeks, and such an oddly and unnecessarily long proroguing has never occured during a massive political crisis. No offense but the Supreme Court of the U.K. is more of an expert on the subject than commenters on Hacker News and it's their context and interpretation as subject matter experts we should be respecting.
This is not normal. It's not the new normal.
Good on the U.K. for standing up for the Parliament against an out-of-control Executive who really does appear to following in the footstep of the recent trend of western leaders fancying themselves fascist dictators who are above the laws and systems of their countries.
In 1997, the justification was to stop a politically damaging report being published before an election.
Again, Johnson is not denying Parliament the opportunity to vote on the deal. Nothing will happen now that Parliament is sitting again. The negotiation will still happen at the European Council meeting at the end of the month, and Parliament will still get a vote on it.
It is important to really think through the logic here: if Johnson wanted to stop Parliament he would delayed until AFTER October 31. He didn't do this.
Secondly, the damage done was accordingly limited: If people saw the delay as questionable, people were given an opportunity to directly punish the government in an election rather than doing so indirectly via Parliament. If there was time to hold a general election with suitable margin ahead of October 31st, then this proroguing would not have been an issue, as we'd be going into an election instead.
> Again, Johnson is not denying Parliament the opportunity to vote on the deal.
It is not up to Johnson or the courts to decide what Parliament may or may not consider critical to do in the run-up to such a major constitutional change. His government serves with the consent of parliament; parliament is sovereign, not the government.
> It is important to really think through the logic here: if Johnson wanted to stop Parliament he would delayed until AFTER October 31. He didn't do this.
This does not follow. If he had announced he would prorogue until after October 31, then he would have to give up any pretense that he is negotiating a deal, because parliament would be unable to vote for it. It would instantly ensure a majority for removing him, as everyone opposed to no deal would have no other choice. His only option if his goal was to stop Parliament was to limit their ability to function as much as possible but still little enough to not push people into deciding removing him instantly was absolutely essential.
I don't think the logic leads to this conclusion. His calculus may have been that the prorogation would be more likely to be successfully challenged if it _clearly_ cut parliament out of the process altogether. By leaving some time for them to sit ahead of his October 31st deadline he likely hoped that the prorogation would stand, he could negotiate a deal, downplay the possiblity of an extension, and then force a vote to approve the deal as the only alternative to a no-deal Brexit given the short timeline.
That would've made the motivations too explicit. He'd presumably hoped to skate by with your argument - "oh, I left a week or two to tackle this minor issue". It didn't work.
And it is worth saying: to get that verdict, they had to take the leap of judgement in assuming they knew exactly why the PM did it. The key assumption in that is there is an alternative before the October 31, there isn't...so it doesn't matter if Parliament is sitting or not because there is nothing to scrutinise.
To explain: Johnson was not denying Parliament a voice at all because he wasn't suspending past October 31. He was suspending until a few days before the European Council meeting, where the final deal will be negotiated, and then Parliament would vote on it. 95% of articles on this topic do not make this clear. The timetable does not change whether or not Parliament is sitting. It only changes if you are someone deluded enough to believe that there is an alternative...there isn't (the EU has said this multiple times).
What is burdening the system is:
* UK voted to leave * General election was called which Brexit parties won (somehow given May's ineffectiveness) * MPs voted to leave * MPs voted down the current deal 4 times but EU won't change that deal * MPs refuse to re-negotiate the deal or do anything that makes a deal possible * The "alternative" from Labour is to go to the EU, negotiate exactly the same deal that has been voted down 4 times then they will whip their MPs against that deal too.
It is utterly bizarre to take aim at the only person who actually has a definite idea about how to solve this situation (regardless of whether you agree with it or not).