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Last week I went to the Lib Dem Conference.  It was a new departure for me, but with the country stuffed into an explosives-filled bus, being hurtled towards a cliff-edge by a fifty-something truth-economist trying to get over not being head boy at Eton, I thought I should go and have a look at what the other options were. 

However, I’ll have to tell you all about it next time, because this week the bus lost a couple of wheels, and the driver was downgraded to proroguing-wannabe, after the Supreme Court decided to settle once and for all that justiciability was a real word. 

Well, that, and Prime Ministers hoodwinking parliament being a no-no. 
 
The cliff-edge may have to wait.  


The porky-pie-ness of the situation turned out not to be what mattered; at least not from a legal point of view.

Instead, the judges ruled that it was the effect of the prorogation that was illegitimate – it prevented parliamentary sovereignty and scrutiny – rather than Johnson’s motives, and the lies he might have told to bring it about.  
 
Although he mustn’t feel the lies were wasted  – Her Maj might not have been quite so quick with her seal of approval had he not been a bit of a legend in that department.

Besides, if you want to be world-class at something, you have to practice every day.


I feel a lot of legal time and money might have been saved if, before giving her assent, Her Maj had seen Brexit-backing hedge-funder, Crispin Odey, gleefully telling the camera why parliament might have to be shut down to get Brexit through (last Sunday’s Channel 4 documentary, Tories at War).

    
Which also ought to shut up all the Brexiteers who are up in arms about it, but it does not: politicians should be able to do whatever they want without spider-touting judges poking their noses in.

And they have a point: Hitler and Mussolini would never have got anything done if they had had to put up with that sort of nonsense. 
 
But the big red bus may not be finished yet: Brexiteers are a determined lot. Literally nothing kills their enthusiasm:  some of them would still want to leave the EU even if there was credible evidence that the entire nation’s first-borns would all be slaughtered by King Herod.

Hence the need for serious opposition, and the only party taking them on is the Lib Dems.