Supreme Court: Suspending Parliament was unlawful, judges rule
bbc.co.uk
bbc.co.uk
This is a very clear and damning verdict.
Suspending parliament for five weeks in a critical time would be heavily criticized by the West as a major anti-democratic and authoritarian move in any other country.
It's something that would have been unimaginable to happen in the UK a few years ago, and will probably burden the UKs political system for a long time.
Interesting times indeed.
You say that but we had it happen in 1997 to prevent parliamentary discussion of the cash for questions scandal that ultimately toppled the Major Conservative government.
I believe that the Blair government considered it in the run up to the Iraq war too but didn't.
Also length is a strong distinguishing factor. A few days or even a week or two are different enough in this situation to elevate a difference of degree to a difference in kind.
Finally, it happened with a PM that had a majority. Arguably the PM is not overuling the purpose of parliament when parliament itself agrees with the action. That is not the case here, there is no majority for the PM, and to all available evidence there is a majority that oppose this move by Johnson.
Did nobody tell parliament that Brexit was an issue? They've had 3 years to act. Why 2 more weeks is so critical isn't actually all that obvious in the big picture. If a 5-week break in parliament is the difference between outcomes in a 3 year process; it is too close to call and it is democratic enough whatever happens. The details are important but ultimately just politics.
On truly divisive 50-50 issues, either option is basically acceptable in a democratic country. Democracies are to avoid the 60-40 splits where countries barrel in to truly foolish ideas that nobody supports. Brexit or No Brexit by means fair and foul aren't going to be death blows; the public has been polled and the politicians have been given time to talk. Neither really expressed a clear direction. It falls to the executive to execute something.
Anyhow; courts made a good call. More talking makes for a happy parliament.
When you dont have agreement on what to do and a deadline is looming, it seems obvious that, however much it should NOT have been needed, it is in fact critical.
You arent chopping 5 weeks off of a 3 year period, you're chopping 5 weeks off of an 8 week period.
This is really about playing politics against Johnson and the government, not an actual outrage. Of course the government was doing the same by prorogating.
It's a pretty fundamental flaw that interferes with "near tossup means it could go either way" as a philosophy. It's a pathological case, but not uncommon.
Regardless of whether they could have acted sooner, Johnson's move was to prevent them from acting now when faced with a new administration and new course of action that had every appearance of going against both the will of parliament and (though less legally relevant) the will of the people in that most do not support crashing out without a deal.
You can't claim they had 3 years to act on the current situation when the current situation just arose in the form of a new PM that was attempting to side step any parliamentary review or legislation over his course of action.
Finally, they actually did act this past spring to vote that no deal wasn't an acceptable outcome. It was part of a series of non-binding votes that established governmental norms should have meant that it would be honored. When, after Johnson became PM, it was clear that it would not be honored, parliament quickly acted in the short time before being proroqued to actually enact in law the requirement to ask the EU for an extension in the face of no-deal. So, not only is 3 years not what they had to address the current situation, to they extent that they could address the current situation, they did so. Their desire to do more was prohibited by Johnson's (now illegal) actions.
Just because there's no agreement doesn't mean there will be no impact!
In fact there's a better precedent - Attlee's prorogation in 1948.
The difference is that both were done by a PM with a working majority, so it could be argued they were done with the consent of Parliament.
Johnson nuked his own majority from orbit, so there's absolutely no argument that he's acting with the confidence and approval of Parliament.
Which is part of the problem. Parliament will remove him with a No Confidence vote soon. But first it wants to make sure that he doesn't make any other attempt to game electoral or Parliamentary procedure to force through the mad Brexit agenda that his hedge-fund owning backers want to profit from.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prorogation_in_the_United_King...
(BoJo's government still has the confidence of Parliament until it doesn't- that's not what the court ruled on)
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).
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).
> 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 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).
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.
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.
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.
A decade ago, the kind of things we've seen over the last 3-4 years would have been borderline unthinkable. If this were all a TV show, people would've called it too far-fetched or too distant from reality.
Whatever happens - there will be enough content to create movies, whole modules for university classes, and a dozen or so questions for pub quizzes.
As for Boris - imagine being the first Prime Minister in British History to be found guilty of misleading the monarchy. Now, imagine going through a shattering defeat in court, while STILL being far ahead in the polls.
That's what we say now, because we're used to the way it was. We need to start preparing ourselves for the possibility that these changes are permanent.
The current clown show in the USA will become essentially permanent if 45 is re-elected. Even if he isn't his party has changed forever and the decorum of the presidency has been tarnished beyond the possibility of any quick repair. Likewise, I expect, in the UK... especially if a no-deal brexit comes to pass.
This is because of the appalling state of Labour, which is currently controlled by actual communists.
People are not stupid. Labour's current policies would be far worse than Brexit.
With a 'normal', half-decent opposition the Tories would have been overthrown years ago.
The average person doesn't care about policies, though. Labour under Ed Milliband had some good policies, but he was undone because he looked weird when eating a bacon sandwich. You could argue the same for Gordon Brown, who looked weird when he smiled when compared to the overly polished David Cameron.
IMO, the people just don't like Corbyn, and many people cling to the idea that the PM is the outright ruler of the land, when Brexit has shown the exact opposite - they are a leader, but they need a house to push their majority through.
I do agree with you, though. If Owen Smith had plotted a coup a few years later, he'd probably be 20-30 points ahead, and Boris would do everything possible to avoid a GE. The one good thing about Corbyn is that he is a campaigner, so the second a GE becomes a reality he'll be in his element.
If Boris wins, then I give up. The Tories will have sold their soul for Brexit, the Labour party will have destroyed any credibility as a viable opposition, and the Lib Dems will have aligned too heavily with the Tories to be viable themselves. I don't know where the country goes from there, but I would love to not be a part of it.
Their current delirium about private education, which is also a textbook communist party style policy (suppression, assets seizure and "democratic" redistribution), only adds to this.
I could add their populist war in private landlords and calls for rent controls...
Beyond Corbyn himself this does scare many people away.
With that being said, the current policy doesn't seem to be to scrap them entirely, but to remove their charity status. This does make sense, but will require more thought than what they've given so far. Removing their status ensures they're paying fair tax, but it also means that they are no longer required to share their facilities with state schools.
It's a weird policy to lead with, and the cynic in me believes they're doing so to push the class divide, in order to get more Leave voters behind them.
Is that so? From the notoriously left-wing Telegraph a couple of weeks ago:
"Corbyn better than no-deal Brexit, say investment banks" course they had to add "as anti-capitalist Labour wins unlikely new City fans"
They try their best, bless 'em, to spin him as devil incarnate, but Citibank and Deutsche Bank sound unconvinced. The FT was much more open minded reporting the same news.
Corbyn's and Labour's biggest problem is their refusal to take a side yet. "It depends" is hardly a vote winning stratagem. Had they made up their sodding mind, we might easily have had a Corbyn government by now. Most of their other policies sit well with the populace.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2019/09/03/corbyn-bette...
Of course with Corbyn we would get both Brexit and the far left. I.e. the worse of both worlds.
Most people still prefer the Tories to that, as shown in the polls.
All those precedents, conventions and case law look so weak compared to a fully written constitution. Yet a written constitution can spawn no end of legal activity to decide the precise meaning of a comma.
Whether the British Constitution's famous flexibility is a good thing will be argued for centuries to come, I suspect.
> the kind of things we've seen over the last 3-4 years would have been borderline unthinkable
Which you could say is the result of the last time someone decided to take the piss constitutionally. The chances of another PM being quite so cavalier in the next 20 years or so are slim to none. Regardless of what you wished to happen, there's no way Johnson's "cunning plan" worked out as intended, or with positive press resulting.
> Boris - imagine being the first Prime Minister in British History to be found guilty of misleading the monarchy
I think there's precedent, but before it was formally PM, but still just First Lord of the Treasury. Lord North possibly?
Full judgment: https://www.supremecourt.uk/cases/docs/uksc-2019-0192-judgme...
It's a model of calmness and clarity.
Is this really implying that the government doesn't keep track of Prime Ministerial communication to the extent that we're not even sure what day he gave formal advice to the queen?! Surely at the very least there is a call log.
As such, when a group of parliamentarians are among those who have sued arguing their ability to do their job is frustrated, then parliament is frustrated.
The recess issue is relatively irrelevant given that we're already in uncharted waters, with Parliament having sat unusually long due to Brexit. It's already established that the timeline relating to Brexit means other conventions are being sidelined because of the importance of getting this sorted. Since Boris didn't wait for votes over recess to happen, he can not say that there would not have been adjustments made. E.g. even if Parliament as a whole were not to sit, there'd have been nothing stopping Parliament from continuing certain committee work, for example.
I know that the judgment is very recent but I suggest that you read it in full when you get a chance. The court specifically noted that a substantial amount of delegated legislation related to Brexit was scheduled to be handled by parliamentary committees in the period (under provisions in the European Withdrawal Act), and that parliamentary committees continue to sit during recess. They specifically rejected the Government’s claim that a recess period is equivalent to a prorogation, noting that during a recess parliamentary questions can still be asked (and answered) and committees continue to sit.
The prorogation is unlawful not because it prevents debate on the floor of the houses, but because it shuts down all activity in parliament in way that recess does not, and that no reasonable explanation was given to do this.
> The day after nothing changes legally. There is no legal obligation on the British Government to take Britain out of the EU immediately. There will be three stages of creating a new UK-EU deal - informal negotiations, formal negotiations, and implementation including both a new Treaty and domestic legal changes. There is no need to rush. We must take our time and get it right.
The pathologically EU-loyal British establishment is now trying to destroy the vote via the following simple trick:
1. Declare that there's no way to leave without a "deal"
2. Make it clear to the EU they can dictate any terms they want whatsoever because the UK will under no circumstances walk away from the table.
3. EU dictates terms that are essentially the same as not leaving, or actually even worse.
4. Establishment declares that this "deal" is the same thing as leaving and tries to ram it through, or failing that, to cancel the whole thing by claiming that the UK can't leave unless the EU agrees due to <generic chaos>. Both outcomes are fine by them because it establishes for good the principle that leaving the EU should be as impossible as an American State seceding from the Union, which is what they want.
What we see at the moment are people actually working in the real economy, like port operators, saying they're prepared for no deal and there'd be no disruption at all. The EU has also quietly agreed various unrelated agreements to e.g. keep planes flying and even granting London a financial passport, the thing they said they'd never actually do. The fact that "no deal" actually means already "a bunch of small continuity deals" has gone largely unnoticed in the UK.
But ultimately now it's gone far beyond port disruption, mobile roaming costs or other trivial things. The British people are receiving a message loud and clear that the entire ruling class simply will not let the UK leave unless the EU agrees, despite it being a theoretically self-governing nation. If the UK doesn't leave without the EU's agreement then many will conclude it's actually a dictatorship.
I think that the real issue here is that there doesn't appear to be a majority in Parliament for anything (witness the indicative votes earlier this year, which found no majority for any form of deal).
I think that the reason many MP's are unwilling to let the UK leave without a deal are as follows:
1) It doesn't solve anything. You still need to agree what to do for a future relationship, from a much, much weaker position (only Council of Ministers agreeement for Article 50 deal, versus Council, EU Parliament and all national regional parliaments required for a future trade deal).
2) The EU will not allow any trade deals to happen unless the Irish border, the rights of EU citizens and the money issues are resolved.
3) The UK imports the majority of their food, and WTO tariffs are really high on food, leading to potential problems with food supply (remember that it's November, when not much grows in the UK).
Like, I don't doubt that some MP's want to remain in the EU, but for my money most of them have voted for some form of Brexit deal, with the exception of the rabidly fanatical members of the European Research Group.
Additionally, with respect to the terms offered by the EU: Yes, they will be worse than staying in the EU. By definition, if you leave a club, you no longer have access to the facilities of the club. It would make zero sense for the EU to do a deal for the UK that was better or the same as membership, because no-one would remain in the EU then.
I think that the citizens of the UK have been let down by many of their political representatives, but i don't believe that their desire to remain in the EU is the cause.
Leaving the EU is pretty easy. There's a raft of existing models to base the new relationship on - Norway, Switzerland etc. Pick one, maybe tweak it slightly to make sure you don't start a war in NI, done.
The problem is that the entire process is being run by isolationist extremists who see the UK's largest trading partner as Beelzebub and reject any form of broad agreement with the EU.
That's a nice strawman you're building...
> EU dictates terms that are essentially the same as not leaving, or actually even worse.
Yes. I mean, what else would you expect? They're not going to treat a random country better than EU partners.
> working in the real economy, like port operators, saying they're prepared for no deal and there'd be no disruption at all
Real people already have to apply for residency and not everybody gets it. Disruption has already happened.
While the referendum was yes or no, the framing was radically different. The "leavers" ran on a platform of, essentially, we have a plan, the EU will co-operate and there will hundreds of millions of pounds of savings. Then, post-referendum, some of the leaders (including Boris) promptly resigned because they had no plan, others negotiated badly (and one could say, in bad faith), and it became clear there was not going to be millions of pounds in savings.
"Vote yes! There'll be ice cream, cake, and unicorns."
"I vote yes!"
"Thanks! Now, there's no ice cream, the cake is Pineapple Upside-Down Cake and unicorns don't exist you bloody git."
> In fact it was. It was a simple vote between leaving and remaining
So... do you mean "In fact it was", or do you mean "It was a simple vote between leaving and remaining"?
I agree that in the current era though, she would only send for an alternate PM if they had demonstrated confidence of the House of Commons, which is very unlikely.
Almost no government is.
The government doesn't have a parliamentary majority, and Boris hasn't stood as a PM candidate in a general election.
There's another problem, too. The First Past the Post electoral system prevents the electorate from correcting the state of affairs (except perhaps by accident). Call me cynical, but calls for an early general election under the existing system look like a power grab rather than a sincere attempt to let the electorate decide.
Alec Douglas-Home became PM while a member of the House of Lords in 1963, though he renounced his peerage on becoming PM and stood for a safe seat (Kinross and Western Perthshire). While waiting for the by-election, he was PM without being a member of either house.
It's unlikely this will happen again, but there's as far as I know still no law preventing it.
More importantly, the government isn't non-democratic by any definition.
Specifically, Boris was elected prime minister by a very small number of people, and no-one voted for the cabinet.
> PM wants an election as well, which he's likely to win (well, according to polls... which are likely wrong!)
It's kind of irrelevant what the PM wants - general elections are held in accordance to the Fixed Term Parliament Act 2011 (which was passed when the tories were in government). If he wants an election, it has to be with the consent of Parliament (ie the people).
Well, you're wrong, so why don't you go and do the basic reading first?
"In a democratic government the right of decision belongs to the majority, but the right of representation belongs to all."
The lack of proportional representation deprives UK voters of both majority rule and adequate minority representation. The consequences are usually subtle, but the February 1974 general election gave the most seats to a party without the most votes. The 1951 election gave a majority of seats to a party without the most votes.
Sure, but if high courts are disagreeing about whether it's even within the scope of the law at all, isn't it a bit much to call it 'obviously illegal', i.e. not only in 'obviously' in scope, but also with 'obvious' ruling?
A matter undertaken by the Parliament may still have been illegal, but not under their purview, because of that.
[1] It is forbidden from doing so by the Bill of Rights 1688: That the Freedome of Speech and Debates or Proceedings in Parlyament ought not to be impeached or questioned in any Court or Place out of Parlyament.
And thus, in my eyes, precluding it from being 'obviously' illegal!
Their summary makes this a bit clearer - "...was unlawful because it had the effect of frustrating or preventing the ability of Parliament to carry out its constitutional functions without reasonable justification."
They never actually indicate any law that has been violated. Just sort of a general assertion that it was an asshole, undemocratic move that they have now declared to be "illegal".
Furthermore, I remember when it was originally announced that he was considering doing this and every single lawyer, pundit, and news outlet that I read said very clearly that while it was "unthinkable" it was completely legal and he had every right to do so with the power of his position/office.
Interesting. Do you have extraordinary legal qualifications that make your opinion more valid than the unanimous judgment of the highest court in the land?
Also, let's not pretend like the courts get things right all the time. Even the "highest court in the land" fucks up all the time. Same here in the US. The judges are just as biased as everyone else. The law on this isn't even complicated. The Queen, not Boris Johnson, has the power to prorogue parliament. Therefore the request that she do so cannot be an illegal act by Boris Johnson. That's really simple logic to follow. And the Queen is immune from legal process so no act done by her can be deemed illegal which is why the court ruled that it was the advice/request that was illegal. This insane logic is just as outrageous as the actual request to prorogue parliament made by Johnson.
Although the result is novel, this isn't particularly unusual for how the British legal systems work. Similar in principle to DC v Heller in the US Supreme Court, I suspect: the second amendment is known, but what is means for a particular DC handgun law isn't obvious until SCOTUS rules. The same here: the principle that the Crown can't use the prerogative to frustrate Parliament is now well established (starting with the Case of Proclamations [1610] EWHC KB J22) but it hadn't been tested in court whether that applied to these circumstances. Now we know.
And the courts always get things right, yeah? Especially when it's a rushed decision based on an urgent and time sensitive event? Also, I have no skin in the UK game at all. I'm not a citizen and don't give a shit who's in power over there. I'm just an outside observer with a tub of popcorn.
The court ruled that the advice given to the Queen was illegal and she was the one who actually has the power to prorogue parliament. The Queen is exempt from the legal process and as Queen everything she does within her powers is assumed to be legal. The courts know this, which is why they want the crazy route to declare Johnson's advice/request to be the thing that was illegal. It's absurd.
As a non-Commonwealther, what exactly is the PM supposed to (or not supposed) to do? In school the PM was always explained as "their version of President," which I know waxes over tonnes of detail.
The day after the proroguing announcement, I read a bit that claimed this was "normal" in the UK Parliament. What makes this so particularly unusual and illegal?
The situation now is that the prime minister doesn't have majority support in parliament and is using powers like prorogation to act against the majority of parliament.
> I read a bit that claimed this was "normal" in the UK Parliament.
Short prorogations are normal in order to prepare for Queen's speeches. However, this one is unusually long, with a political context of preventing parliament from exercising their powers.
> what exactly is the PM supposed to (or not supposed) to do?
Normally this kind of conflict doesn't arise, because the government has a large majority, and if they cease to have a majority then the PM is replaced by a no-confidence vote.
Normally the PM is supposed to Be A Good Chap and Do The Decent Thing, which are ill-defined concepts from British honour culture, but have basically gone out the window with Johnson's behaviour.
Recess is just a quick break for the conference season, and is normal at this time of year. Progrogation brings all parliamentary business to an end, bills are not carried over to the next session (so work on them has to start from scratch), and select committees can't sit. That's a very different state of affairs.
In US terms the role of the PM in European parliamentary democracies is closer to the role of the head of a US government agency than the president, i.e. the head of the DOD, USDA, DOE etc.
Except the role of this "agency" is "run the country". But it's the same in the sense that the head of a US agency serves at the pleasure of the president, the PM serves at the pleasure of parliament.
We elect a parliament. Then one of them goes to the Governor general and says "I have support of the majority of the members", and voila: they are the Prime Minister.
Could be any member, from any party, for any reason, just so long as the majority of MPs support the person.
And once that person is PM, that just means they sit in and control the Prime Minister's office, and choose the Cabinet.
After that, they're just a figurehead who happens to be the MP with the most power.
My Hail-Mary hope for this next election is that Jody Wilson-Rayboul reruns as an independent, wins, then Trudeau gets a minority and gets kicked out as head of the Liberals. This leaves a strange minority government situation that is perfect for Jody to take charge as the first independent PM. (It could happen!)
Of course, the convention could change, and the Queen take someone else's advice. But that would be a major constitutional change that would make today's relatively small development pale into insignificance.
And the issue people have is the alternative. There is no alternative.
The implication of the decision is that Parliament is now going to do something...well, the European Council won't meet until before Oct 31 anyway...which is when Parliament would get to scrutinise the final deal.
And the big plan that the opposition has is: to go to the EU, negotiate the same exact deal that has been voted down 4 times, and then whip their MPs to vote it down again.
The lack of actual practical understanding here, not just here but on the part of journalists, is astonishing.
The only comparison that comes to mind is in football: journalists and fans will turn on a manager, they will laugh at them on Twitter, write endless articles about how they are washed up, clubs will then panic and fire the manager...and then only then realise that there is no-one else to do the job, and they just fired the only person who can.
He doesn't hold a majority.
> And the big plan that the opposition has is: to go to the EU, negotiate the same exact deal that has been voted down 4 times, and then whip their MPs to vote it down again.
No it isn't. The plan of the opposition is to get an extension, and hold a general election as a proxy for what should happen: Tory party for no deal fuck you up the arse brexit, Lib Dems for revoke it and put out the fire, Labour for a 2nd referendum with clear options that involves significantly less self-mutilation than an empty "leave" deal.
And you don't appear to have thought out what the practical impact is. They will still have to negotiate a deal and it is not going to be any different to the deal that May got because they are taking exactly the same approach. Stick head in sand, delay, hope something changes.
Tory party policy is deal. They have never suggested anything otherwise. What people are confusing is the strategy and the deal. The strategy is to, attempt to, resolve the constant crisis and delay. Part of this involves accepting that the EU has red lines that they won't shift on.
This is true. But accepting that means throwing all the promises of the referendum campaign out of the window and accepting that leaving the customs union means significant damage to the economy and that the EU will not allow them to leave free movement while remaining in the customs union.
And yes, I believe the independents will vote against the government every time until the extension is got and then they will VONC/FTPA into an election.
Like how Angus King (I-VT) can be relied upon to vote with the Democrats in the US Senate.
The people you are defending are traitors.
It would open the door ... to a form of judicial review that is widely accepted in the United States, which has a codified Constitution and a Supreme Court that actively interprets it.
Britain, by contrast, relies on an unwritten set of traditions and conventions that have treated a sovereign Parliament as the supreme law of the land. Once the courts venture into the political sphere and begin passing judgment on Parliament’s actions, legal analysts say, there is no going back.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/24/world/europe/uk-supreme-c...
The court explicitly did not pass judgement on an action of Parliament.
From page 3 of the summary (https://www.supremecourt.uk/cases/docs/uksc-2019-0192-summar...)
> But it is quite clear that the prorogation is not a proceeding in Parliament. It takes place in the House of Lords chamber in the presence of members of both Houses, but it is not their decision. It is something which has been imposed upon them from outside. It is not something on which members can speak or vote. It is not the core or essential business of Parliament which the Bill of Rights protects. Quite the reverse: it brings that core or essential business to an end.
Instead it passed judgement on an action of the government which it has done for centuries.
From page 2 of the summary:
> The first question is whether the lawfulness of the Prime Minister’s advice to Her Majesty is justiciable. This Court holds that it is. The courts have exercised a supervisory jurisdiction over the lawfulness of acts of the Government for centuries. As long ago as 1611, the court held that “the King [who was then the government] hath no prerogative but that which the law of the land allows him”.
Government is not parliament. The UK supreme Court upheld the sovereignty of parliament over government within narrow limits: prorogation must be consensual and justified.
OK, best I can figure is NYT is trying to make the point that if the UK Supreme Court is becoming willing to get involved with such highly political matters, there's no reason they wouldn't seek to extend that to Parliamentary matters. Does that comport with the facts and opinions here?
> That the Freedome of Speech and Debates or Proceedings in Parlyament ought not to be impeached or questioned in any Court or Place out of Parlyament.
And Claim of Right 1689 (Parliament of Scotland):
> That for redress of all greivances and for the amending strenthneing and preserveing of the lawes Parliaments ought to be frequently called and allowed to sit and the freedom of speech and debate secured to the members.
Whilst the Court determines the scope of Parliamentary privilege (i.e. determining what constitutes a proceeding of Parliament), there is a very clear reason they would not extend their purview to Parliamentary matters, and clearly they have no power to overrule Acts of Parliament.
Second, the courts have previously acted to bring acts of parliament under judicial review, with the Investigatory Powers Act https://www.libertyhumanrights.org.uk/news/press-releases-an...
That's just the tip of the iceberg. There's much more anti-democratic changes in Australia.
Which kind of begs the question, what would happen if the position was terminated and possibly replaced with a President (which would have a bigger role)
...yeah, is there anything to add here?
Personally I think Blair's suggestion of another referendum on no deal vs remain would be the way forward as those are the most popular options with the voters. Everyone seems to hate the withdrawal agreement.
But what we've seen over the past 3.5 years is that there was already a referendum, and it's had no effect whatsoever because the ruling classes keep fighting it all the way. The UK is still a member of the EU, nearly four years after they voted last time!
Moreover, all the politicians in the two biggest political parties campaigned last time on respecting and implementing the vote. They're now not doing that.
If you voted leave last time, why would you bother doing it again? The head of the Liberal Democrats admitted on camera already that if she lost a second referendum she still wouldn't vote to implement leaving in Parliament, which surprised nobody at all.
The idea of a second referendum is proposed for exactly one reason only: so it can be rigged to give Remain a second chance. Simply re-running it would already give Remain a bigger chance than last time because so many of those who voted Leave before would be disillusioned, believe the new vote was just another lie and refuse to turn up at all.
But I doubt the establishment would take any chances. The Electoral Commission has been repeatedly found to have maliciously harassed and fined Leave supporters and campaigns, by the courts and police. For sure they'd try and bend the process significantly.
Parliament would also likely try to ensure a Remain victory. Probably by changing voting thresholds or by only offering remain/deal (i.e. remain/remain) and then campaigning on the basis that the Withdrawal Agreement is so bad it'd be better to give up entirely.
In the event that somehow a genuine no deal/remain referendum did take place, and the powers that be didn't interfere, and Leave won again, it'd be immediately challenged in courts by Gina Miller and her lawyer friends, the same Parliament would still be in power and still be refusing to implement it, and it'd change nothing.
In the end the only way out of this mess is unilaterally leaving the EU and then starting to rebuild whatever relationship is possible from scratch, replacing most sitting MPs and formalising a written constitution.
At the cost of hundreds of thousands of jobs, colossal disruption, possible interruptions to food and medical supplies? Are you delusional that you think it's easy or do you just not care who gets harmed?
Imports into the UK are under the control of the UK government. As such it's hard to imagine how and why food and medicine imports (or anything else deemed important) would be disrupted.
Let's break it down.
Loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs. This is an economic prediction so we can't know for sure if it would be true or not unless it really happens. But before the vote, this very same prediction was made in very similar form and turned out to be completely false.
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/britain-to-enter-recessio...
Britain’s economy would be tipped into a year-long recession, with at least 500,000 jobs lost and GDP around 3.6% lower, following a vote to leave the EU, new Treasury analysis launched today by the Prime Minister and Chancellor shows.
NB: This analysis was about voting to Leave, not actually leaving, so we can test its correctness now. The analysis talks about the uncertainty created by two years of negotiations, saying it would destroy at best 500,000 jobs and at worst 800,000 jobs. Leave won, there have been 3.5 years of uncertainty and the economy is performing incredibly well. Employment has grown strongly since the vote. This prediction posed as scientific fact, but was riven with huge Remain bias and turned out to be nonsense.
So now the same people are making the same claim again, but won't explain why this time they're right or what they learned from their previous failure. It's entirely reasonable to assume they've learned nothing, are making these claims for political reasons and will be wrong again.
OK, now, colossal disruption. Possible interruptions to food and medical supplies.
Really?
The explanation for why such disruption would happen goes like this. The UK will implement more customs checks, which would be slow and temporarily overwhelm customs infrastructure, leading to supply chain disruptions and disasters.
Two problems with this claim.
Firstly, why would any sane government insist on customs checks if people were dying due to lack of medicine or food? Tariff income isn't that important and on day one the precise rules will be the same anyway. It'd be much more sensible to just relax customs checks to whatever level was needed to ensure continuity of supply until enough infrastructure was built.
Secondly and more importantly, people who actually run ports are saying the infrastructure is already built and it's not true that there'd be large disruptions in case of no deal.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2018/12/08/lettersthe-uk...
The CEO of the UK Major Ports Group says:
I write on behalf of the United Kingdom’s major port operators, responsible for handling 75 per cent of the country’s seaborne trade. Dover, handling around 6 per cent of UK port volumes, faces a unique combination of Brexit risk factors that are not faced by most major UK ports. These ports already have the capacity and infrastructure to handle large volumes of both EU and non-EU trade today without logjam.
So apparently the people running the ports think only Dover might have issues, but if it gets overloaded traffic would just go elsewhere. What does the head of Dover Port think about this?
In Bloomberg:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-09-19/u-k-port-...
The Port of Dover -- through which a sixth of the U.K.’s trade in goods flows -- can cope with any disruption thrown up by a no-deal Brexit, Chief Executive Officer Doug Bannister said, suggesting some of the direr predictions of chaos are wide of the mark.
So people who run ports are saying this is just politically driven scaremongering.
As for medicines, if you look at the NHS advice page, it says the extent of their plans is hiring additional space on planes or ferries to handle temporary transport disruption (which, remember, port operators are saying won't actually be an issue): https://www.england.nhs.uk/eu-exit/medicines/medicines-faq/
So the claims being made here to try and terrify the British population into giving up on Brexit, it's all stuff we heard before or people outside of the establishment are saying isn't true.
The first didn't specify how we would leave - Norway style, no deal of whatever. Hence the current 'no one voted for no deal' type arguments.
There was misinformation - we are now better informed.
I think if no deal won fair and square even remainers such as myself would say ok and accept it. Presently I don't think that's the case - there was a lot of misinformation - and so we are willing to try to block that.
Not sure I'm convinced of that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_of_Civil_Service_Union... , the first case to hold that prerogative powers were subject to normal principles of judicial review, may have been that -- but that was 35 years ago, the principle's been accepted for a long time
In normal times, with a moral leader, this would be an instant resigning matter.
Boris's response has been predictably complacent.
"I accept the verdict but strongly disagree with it" will become a go-to phrase of every burglar and other criminal caught red handed.
Btw, (UK) word of the year:
Prorogation
However, I remember discussing the issue at referendum time with my Leave voting neighbours who were very much the supposedly angry working class type that have been ridiculed and condescended to repeatedly by the liberal media.
They (my friends and neighbours) were adamant that "it doesn't matter what we vote anyway, they will just stop it happening."
At the time, I thought they were being paranoid.
Now they look prescient and wise. Parliament has had 3 years to honour the vote of the people.
Boris Johnson (who I have little like for and am suspicious of his character) is the first leader who has shown the will to make that decision happen.
So, though I regret the referendum decision (and that the moral impetus has been taken on by people I don't feel a natural affinity to), I respect it and support his move to enact it without further delay.
I'd prefer remain at this point, as it's obvious the British political establishment has made a total mess of this process, and will continue to do so. Also as the economic consequences of Brexit become clearer, it's obviously not in the countries interest to do it.
However, I have a strong feeling that remaining now will give endless fuel to hard right parties and their stories of how great Britain would be if it could only break free of the EU.
They will get a lot of support from people who feel betrayed by "the establishment", and they can continue their narrative without actually having to prove anything.
Whilst I can see that there's no such thing as a "clean break" brexit, I think from a political perspective, the consequences of carrying on with this deadlock will be worse in the long term.
The hard right parties aren't going to suddenly go away either if Brexit happens. They're not going to sit back and enjoy Brexit. There would likely be an increase in street attacks on UK-resident Europeans. The economic impact isn't going to be pretty either.
Leave arguments aren't based in facts, so they can't be satisfied by changing the facts. The whole thing is really a successful campaign by the rightwing press, not the parties.
I can understand this but, burrowing in to it, we have a class of people who are struggling for opportunity, work and dignity in an environment which is openly hostile to people in poverty. The bit that hurts my head is that people want to leave the EU as they think the government will then step in and give them the opportunities, work and dignity which they have crave. When it was the governments (of the last 40 years) which have put them in this position..
Here in the North East we have investment from the EU, do you honestly think that the tories are going to jump in and replace that investment? If you say that they have said that they will invest x amount then that it merely a drop in the ocean for regions like this.
IMHO.
The Leave camp, during the campaign, were very strong on the idea that leaving would have economic benefits, not penalties.
When combined with the UK press use of the EU as a scapegoat for many unpopular decisions over the last 40 years, it's not surprising to see the outcome we did.
Reality will only sink in, once we've left and the outcome becomes apparent. I really wish that weren't the case and that people would look at the people pushing brexit to see they are not likely to act in the interests of the majority of the population, but I don't think that's what's happened.
EDIT: to provide one example look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Results_of_the_2016_United_Kin... The North east of England voted Leave in almost every area...
I am from that yellow bit and people were stunned the day after. The whole thing is crazy. Society feels fundamentally broken.
However since then it has been treated as an article of the faith by both the major political parties in the United Kingdom that "brexit means brexit" (and a wide variety of other fairly meaningless slogans)
Now, reversing course would be seen by a large percentage of the population as a betrayal and would quite likely lead to a hard right victory in the next general election (although the vagaries of FPTP could make outcome rather random)
Looking at things like the "britain elects" twitter account which follows various polls, you can see the effect of various outcomes on likely voting https://twitter.com/britainelects/status/1176103416990437377... compared to https://twitter.com/britainelects/status/1176087917149728768... for example.
The whole "advisory", "win margin" etc. phrasing is post-vote weasel words by the losing side (mine). Those are nullification criteria to be established before the vote, not after it doesn't go your way.
If Remain had won by a similar small margin, do you think we would have been using those words to acknowledge some moral failure of our victory?
Personally, I doubt it.
>If Remain had won by a similar small margin, do you think we would have been using those words to acknowledge some moral failure of our victory?
Not really -- preserving your existing trade relationships doesn't seem like the kind of thing that requires an overwhelming majority.
For what it's worth the UK can also cancel Brexit, but that would not solve the problem that the "special deal" for the UK is a massive inequality against all other EU states and can be/is abused by EU-sceptics across the EU, and in addition canceling the Brexit would be a signal towards Hungary, Poland and the rest of Visegrad that they can drag the entire EU on the nose ring and then suddenly canceling everything, while all other parties have to pick up the tab.
There are other routes out of the situation after a VoNC, but they involve Parliament being able to agree on a new PM, which is tricky given that the Leader of the Opposition is cordially despised by much of the Commons and there are deep political problems with any of the other potential candidates. It also would require Boris to either resign or be sacked after losing the VoNC, which is by no means a done deal given that he's ignoring all the other conventions and there's no obvious mechanisms for a forcible dismissal (one hasn't been needed since the early 19th Century, as PMs have done the decent thing on losing the confidence of the House).
Can't be soon enough.
Even in a thread as wretched as this one, a tangent like this stands out as making things worse.
It's probably best to redo whole thing.
How many times?
If people have not changed their mind the result will be the same.
If they have changed their mind they will have done it with the enormous, painful benefit of the past few years of hindsight.
In either case the result will be clearer than what we have now.
If the UK then votes to leave, I'll go with that, regretfully but I will.
One is as others have said. Election now would make a no-deal crashout more likely.
The other is that it was also deliberately timed to reduce participation in a largely non-tory demographic.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/general-election-date-aim...
Boris is now forced to ask Brussels for an extension due to parliament taking over the brexit process. Only then a general election can happen.
The government has a minority of something like -40. This cannot function for long.
Plus do we want election after election fought on a single issue? It's torn the Tories apart, Labour isnt far behind, the Lib Dems aren't exactly endorsing a nuanced set of policies.
We're going to have a 2nd referendum at some point, personally I'd like it to come before an election so parliament can get back to some kind of normalcy, which I don't think will be helped by a parliament full of MPs selected purely on the basis of their views on one issue.
If we had voted to remain and there was a movement attempting to force us to leave I would be manning the barricades in support of remain, despite the fact I voted leave and believe we should leave. And that's because the principle of freedom supercedes what I may or may not like. That's democracy: sometimes you lose, and you moan a bit, and then accept it and get on with things.
In the end, democracy is the only thing that the little man has to defend himself and fighting to keep us in the EU is taking even that little thing away. Why bother voting ever again when if the result is inconvenient for the powers that be, they will simply declare democracy invalid?
As a separate issue, the windows of both sides on 'acceptable' Brexits have been diverging quickly, partly because everyone is now sick of it and partly because the hardcore on both sides are taking the opportunity to seize control of the narrative. As a consequence, anything short of WTO terms is now "BRINO" (which would actually describe the kind of Norway-plus exit fantasised by some on the Remain side after the defeat) and contrariwise anything short of revocation without a referendum is a betrayal of truth and justice.
Never mind. It's not like we wanted a functioning polity after this is resolved, in any case...
Because Labour may not do well at all. Certainly it is very doubtful that they would get an outright majority.
They are split on Brexit (London very pro-Remain, most Northern traditional Labour seats pro-Brexit) and they have been hijacked by effectively communists. This means is has been very hard for them to gather broad support.
This is very visible in the polls where they only get lukewarm numbers.
Well Labour and other party members abstained from a proposal from the prime minster to hold an election and it required 2/3 of MPs, but that never happened.
Labour is trying to get in power, first and foremost.
Unfortunately (or fortunately) they are currently so left wing that they are scaring most moderates away.
The economist M.Blyth has said that best: Jeremy doesnt want an election , he wants to watch the tories tear down themselves to pieces.
Stay or Leave
If (Leave ==true)
With deal or With no deal
That way we get to make a proper decision,with what we have now and didn't have before the referendum, a much more informed electorate.
- The previous parliamentary session was the longest since the civil war (the English one if you're American).
- This prorogue was for an extra four days - which seems quite reasonable considering:
1. there are politicians, who previously campaigned on the losing side of the referendum, bent on hampering negotiations by making the UK accept any deal the EU offers, which is likely to result in a one-sided deal for the UK
2. the last few days of the negotiations are likely to be critical.
Yes, that in itself was exceptional for no good reason - I think the intent there was to avoid having another Queen's Speech before the deadline, back when the deadline was in May.
The negotiations have been carried out on a delusional basis. The EU is not going to cave at the last minute and there's never even been consistency on the UK side about what we want.
That's not true. The prorogation was for 5 weeks. This does include the planned recess of 3 weeks, but it's not a forced recess. Given the importance of what's going on, it could be adjusted/cancelled.
You can't say "it's 4 extra days, because I expected you'd do the usual even though the situation is extraordinary". There was clear opposition to that before the prorogation was officially announced.
As you mention, it's a vital time. The democratic mandate from the general public outweighs parliament's attempts to interfere in negotiations. Prorouging provides an excellent mechanism to allow the PM to focus on negotiations that deliver what people voted for.
> This morning I spoke to Her Majesty The Queen to request an end to the current parliamentary session in the second sitting week in September, before commencing the second session of this Parliament with a Queen’s speech on Monday 14 October.
It's ~a month. Unless he can guarantee the recess would happen, I'm counting it as a month.
Like what? Mays deal that MPs rejected?
The whole problem is ~50% of parliament want to remain, the other half don't all agree on what deal they want.
So if there is a subset that will accept any deal, there clearly isnt enough to make a difference about anything.
"Why Hasn't Brexit Happened?"
https://www.claremont.org/crb/article/why-hasnt-brexit-happe....
Also, the US also has the Supreme Court ruling on actions by the other two branches, so there's really no difference there. If Trump tried to suspend the House of Representatives and a court had to rule on that, you can bet Trump would get slapped down.
And then there's the recent politicalization of appointments to the Supreme Court; not exactly good for the Court's independence.
Stupid though, as much of that shutdown wouldn't have made any difference during the party conference season, which they strangely don't hold during their summer recess.