Hacker News Reader

Comment by the_duke | Hacker News Reader

> This court has already concluded that the prime minister’s advice to Her Majesty was unlawful, void and of no effect. This means that the order in council to which it led was also unlawful, void and of no effect and should be quashed. This means that when the royal commissioners walked into the House of Lords it was as if they walked in with a blank sheet of paper. The prorogation was also void and of no effect. Parliament has not been prorogued. This is the unanimous judgment of all 11 justices.

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.

View on HN

"It's something that would have been unimaginable to happen in the UK a few years ago"

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.

Yeah, though somehow the British press managed to omit that little fact from their regurgitations of John Major's claims about how dangerous and remarkable this action was. His prorogation seems much more clear-cut an example of frustrating Parliamentary scrutiny too; he completely blocked Parliament from sitting between the time he announced it and the election he was hoping to protect, unlike this case where Boris left windows for them to act both before and after the prorogation, and he didn't even have the justification that Boris did of doing it to end an over-long session and hold a Queen's Speech.

Not a few of Major's cabinet ended up in jail, for various reasons.

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.

The prorogation in 1948 was about creating a pro-forma session of Parliament just for the purpose of passing a law an extra time, so as to pass it over the objections of the Lords. It didn't actually prevent Parliament from having its say, which is the issue today.

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)

It was also a bit of an issue for Conservative party in Canada - though nowhere near at the scale & criticality of UK.

Not only was that 1997 incident during a time and issue that was not nearly as critical to the existence of the country, it was not at all comparable because it did not fundamentally prevent parliament from taking meaningful action on the issue: when parliament reconvened it could take up the issue again at it's leisure. In this case, prorogueing parliament had the effect of preventing nearly any meaningful action from taking place before it was too late. It's the difference between delaying action and denying it out right. (Yes there would have been a couple of days, not nearly enough for meaningful review or careful legislative action.)

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.

> In this case, prorogueing parliament had the effect of preventing nearly any meaningful action from taking place before it was too late.

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.

> They've had 3 years to act. Why 2 more weeks is so critical isn't actually all that obvious in the big picture.

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.

They were adding 3 weeks to a 2 week suspension that was planned for party conferences. This is after the 5 week summer recess which they took as usual.

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.

Yes parliament was stalling hard decisions. But this prorogation was not planned three years ago! Neither was the extension. How should they plan their sessions when they can be disabled at a whim?

> Brexit or No Brexit by means fair and foul aren't going to be death blows

Just because there's no agreement doesn't mean there will be no impact!

They've had 3 years, but not to act in the current (very different) circumstances than were present for that 3 year period. Most of that time was spent in the actual substantive negotiations, but those fell apart in their ability to gain parliamentary support, precisely because Theresa May held her cards too close to her vest and away from parliamentary scrutiny & input, and that gave rise to the time crunch here.

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.

Part of the problem in this case is that it's not 50-50. It's more like 33-33-33 for hard brexit, soft brexit, and no brexit, with varying second-choice preferences depending closely on precisely how you phrase the question. There's no option that doesn't leave most people angry. Especially since it's more like 25-25-49, such that the largest single group is outweighed by two other groups that are almost, but not quite, as sharply divided.

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.

It won't burden the system. This has happened before in recent memory and is totally fitting with the powers of the Executive (the only difference here is the subject).

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).

> MPs voted down the current deal 4 times but EU won't change that deal

Sure they will. They just need the UK to bring some proposed changes. To date, they haven't.

https://www.thejournal.ie/barnier-brexit-4521220-Mar2019/

Unfortunately, the "solution" you're referring to violates the Good Friday Agreement, so in fact Boris Johnson does not have a definite idea about how to solve anything whatsoever.

Its fair to say that whether it is in line with or 'breaks' the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement is disputed - the UK courts recently ruled that imposing a border on a no deal exit would not breach it, and what the UK is proposing is less than that.

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).

It is technically true to say the the GFA does not prohibit border controls. However the GFA was negotiated with joint EU membership as part of the existing political background, so it was taken for granted.

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.

Border controls themselves aren't really the major item in dispute (and there are already forms of controls for contraband, alcohol/fuel duty, VAT, and movement of people which occur in a dedramatised way) - its alignment of law and regulation which is disputed much more heavily.

This isn't widely understood, I think.

They're not really in dispute right now, but they will be a massive, massive flashpoint following Brexit.

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.

A soft border with an implicit tolerance of smuggling at a certain level (which in reality is what we have today vs the rest of the world - witness the amount of fake-certified and dangerous goods that come in from eg China with no real enforcement), together with cooperation on enforcement for the bigger offenders (eg the UK assisting in stopping goods before they reach the border if they are destined for RoI and known not to comply with EU standards) would seem to be the pragmatic solution. I don’t think the two sides are really all that far apart on this point.

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.

Yep, that is a common misunderstanding. The solution is not the deal, the solution is the strategy.

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.

Basically there is a general agreement that pigs should fly, but nobody seem to agree on the mechanics (the option of shooting them from a cannon apparently is not liked by anybody).

I think it's pretty clear that in many western democracies it's getting increasingly easy to form majorities "against" stuff while it's getting harder to form majorities "for stuff".

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.

>David Cameron made one of the biggest political errors in modern history here.

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.

> By asking people to have a voice instead of deciding for them??

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.

> In the Swiss model, you'd have subsequent direct votes on specific plans once decided upon.

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.

> The EU referendum absolutely was an exercise in direct democracy.

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".

> Not in the slightest. It was explicitly non-binding on a legal level. It was fundamentally an opinion poll with a large sample size.

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...

The poll you cite indicates a 4 to 6% support for cancelling Brexit. It seems... unlikely... that 90% of Remain voters have now switched over to Leave.

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...

> The poll you cite indicates a 4 to 6% support for cancelling Brexit. It seems... unlikely... that 90% of Remain voters have now switched over to Leave.

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.

> Losers consent is a part of democracy and life.

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."

> When Labour wins an election the entire Tory party doesn't switch over to their side of things.

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.

> 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.

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.

>Breakup from the EU is so complex that we could not have prepared for it enough to know the ramifications of any options.

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.

Nobody cared about the Irish border. I remember talking to my boss a few days after (he's English, I'm Irish) and I mentioned the North. He assumed that I meant the North of England, rather than Northern Ireland, which just goes to show how little thought was given to Northern Ireland during the referendum.

Yup. Ireland is by far the biggest issue we've got to deal with. I'm slowly coming to the conclusion that a soft border (with CCTV cameras only and no hard barriers) is our only option.

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.

That's why there are elections, the vast majority of the electorate really isn't equipped to deal with all the details and ramifications of what a big decision like this entails: therefore we choose representatives whose ideas we agree with so that they, along with experts of choice, can deep-dive into the consequences of each decision and make appropriate choices. For example: ask me about agricultural policy and you'll find out why I should have no business in making any sort of significant decisions about it.

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.

> just look at Switzerland

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.

In general, Swiss referenda are fairly well-thought-out; the voter knows what they're voting for.

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...

Very true (and might I say, a rare sensible comment on this topic). The end result is very much a function of the starting point.

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).

>But I would say that Johnson is the only one who has actually recognised the difficulty

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.

> I think it's pretty clear that in many western democracies it's getting increasingly easy to form majorities "against" stuff while it's getting harder to form majorities "for stuff".

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.

You're putting words in my mouth. Clearly Brexit is a huge change so brexiteers are clearly not against it. I also don't know where you get the "fear of the unknown" from, you're building a strawman. Brexit is the unknown and Remainers seem to fear that a whole lot.

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.

It isn't my intention to build a strawman, so sorry if that's how you interpreted it, but I'll try and rephrase.

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.

"This has happened before in recent memory and is totally fitting with the powers of the Executive"

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.

Happened in 1997. And the point is not the length of the prorogation (as the Supreme Court decision makes clear) but the justification.

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.

In 1997 the question was not brought before the court, so referencing it as some sort of precedent that his behavior should be acceptable is meaningless.

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.

The government's own lawyers admitted that prorogation had a political purpose. the only logical conclusion is that the goverment intended to restrict parliament's ability to interfere with its brexit plans

> 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.

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.

> 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.

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.

> 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.

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.

> They explicitly side-stepped the motive of why Johnson prorogued Parliament.

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).

> 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.

The UK has a phenomenally large number of low productivity businesses (the BoE has written tons on the productivity crisis). To suggest that businesses would go bust who wouldn't have gone bust otherwise is to confuse cause and effect.

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).

Leaving aside Yellowhammer, Thomas Cook, and the various car manufacturers, the argument that low-productivity businesses are the ones holding the economy back and need to go bankrupt is really questionable. People are free to move jobs. You just have to pay them more. Evidently the wage growth has not yet caught up enough.

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 explicitly side-stepped the motive of why Johnson prorogued Parliament.

> 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.

Yes, and they said "without reasonable justification". The implication of that being that if "reasonable justification" existed then it would be lawful regardless of effect.

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.

> 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).

Isn't the possibility of direct rule still looming with no government formed at Stormont for two years now? Direct rule seems like it would essentially be an abandonment of the Good Friday Agreement.

Yup, and this will be unavoidable in a no-deal Brexit situation, sadly.

Plenty of people have ideas on how to solve this situation, from straight up admit it's unworkable and revoke to having another referendum on "deal vs revoke".

I'm afraid I'd have to disagree with this analysis.

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 had to take the leap of judgement in assuming they knew exactly why the PM did it

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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com