Brexit and UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson suffered yet another setback after the Supreme Court ruled his proroguing of Parliament illegal. I’m no British legal scholar, and I certainly don’t want to be, but from what I understand the arguments used seem incredibly dangerous.
In effect, the plaintiffs argued that if the Prime Minister can suspend Parliament for any length of time, say three days, it would be legally no different then him suspending Parliament for a year or, even, indefinitely.
That’s a dangerous line of argument given the more than 300+ year history of this process, with the Prime Minister proroguing Parliament under far more dubious conditions in the past. This does limit the role of the Government to conduct business and set the agenda, especially if and when the day comes that Parliament is not staffed by people who are loyal to their constituents and not the political elite.
Far be if for this anarcho-libertarian not to cheer at the ineptitude of this arrangement, but it does highlight what’s fundamentally wrong with putting your faith in systems run by men.
The speed with which this was pulled together is the clue that this was a ‘stitch-up’ from the very beginning. Time is running out to stop a No-Deal Brexit, or any kind of meaningful Brexit for that matter, and therefore everything must be turbo-charged.
That’s why I feel this ruling was baked into the pie before the trial even began.
There should be no question that when there is need of a procedural change to thwart Brexit, that procedural change occurs. Speaker John Bercow has rewritten Hansard to give Parliament unprecedented power and the Supreme Court just gave him and the vandals in Parliament even more.
Earlier this month I voiced my long-standing suspicion.
The Remain coalition in the U.K. parliament have become vandals.
They would destroy everything about their government, traditions and what they know to be true outside the halls of Westminster to ensure the dreams of their paymasters are made real.
The fact that they would put forward a bill {Benn Bill} that hands absolute control over future negotiations with the EU to the European Commission is treason. Period.
That they would then hide from a General Election that they know would reverse their coup is an act of vandalism.
It is the height of arrogance for people who first stood on party manifestos to implement Brexit and then demanded a ‘People’s Vote’ to stop it, to simper and use their last remaining bits of power to deny those very people the opportunity to change their representation out of fear of Brexit.
And now they’ve co-opted the courts to ensure that the people are denied their say even while they virtue signal that they are ruling this way for the sake of democracy.
So, now with this ruling in place what’s next and what’s really going on tactically and strategically?
Johnson, for his part, refuses to resign. He can’t or won’t get anything past this hostile Parliament. This Parliament will reconvene to push more legislation to attempt to tie his hands against negotiating with the EU from any position of strength.
Remember what made this ruling necessary. Parliament doesn’t want any meaningful Brexit and refused to accept Johnson’s offer of a General Election to allow the people to form a new government to break the deadlock.
Why? Because they know that a new Parliament would be decidedly more Leave than Remain. The polls are perfectly clear on this. Neither Jo Swinson of the Liberal Democrats nor Jeremy Corbyn of Labour have a prayer in hell of becoming Prime Minister.
If they did, they would have accepted Johnson’s offer. In fact, his offer was derided as a cheap political trick.
If Johnson were to resign here, he would be replaced by a caretaker government under Corbyn, most likely, which would then table a Second Referendum with two versions of Remain on the ballot.
This strategy neatly bypasses the original referendum to ensure the threat to the European Union is nullified.
If he doesn’t resign, the wrangling goes on to neuter Johnson and make him a laughingstock. The EU doesn’t budge on the terms of the deal and Johnson holds onto power in the same way that Parliament does.
Johnson not resigning, however, is his only leverage. So, if he wants to be the Hero of Brexit he has to force Parliament to remove him via a Vote of No Confidence, which he clearly doesn’t have, and go for a General Election first.
In essence, Johnson wants an election first and the Remain camp want a Second Referendum offering a non-choice first. An election would very likely grant him a majority in a coalition with Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party and allow him to get the deal he wants.
Farage, of course, wants the No-Deal option because he rightly believes Johnson doesn’t want a much different deal than the horrific one Theresa May was handed by Angela Merkel.
For the Remain crowd, going for the Second Referendum first would render a general election irrelevant because the new government, no matter how strongly pro-Brexit, would be tied to the terms of the referendum.
That’s the Remain gambit and that’s why the court was always going to rule against the government. It is the British elite and civil service who do not want Brexit. They are all EU-firsters and traitors to the British people they represent.
Their willingness to upend all conventions of civilized governance is the clue you need to realize just how big the stakes are.
With the EU falling into a massive recession that ECB President Mario Draghi is willing to throw aside all EU fiscal compact rules to combat (Hello MMT!) the risks are acute.
Because, make no mistake, losing the UK from the EU’s budget would be catastrophic for an EU staring at massive capital outflows as helicopter money happens and bond yields reverse from their current bubble levels.
Brexit is emblematic of the West’s decline from the rule by law to the rule by men. Gaming the rules to entrench power that does not have the will of the people is a recipe for revolution of the type that ends very badly for those doing it.
The opinion of Parliament in Britain cannot sink any lower. That anger will now be transferred to the courts. The entire Brexit process has been a layer by layer unmasking of the autocratic prerogatives of the ruling class. With each setback in the Brexit process the British people are getting an object lesson in just how corrupt their system is and how badly they have been betrayed.
The hope by The Davos Crowd is that they will get fed up and tune it all out, that they’ll give up and let the UK be steamrolled. The polls tell a far different story.
