General Chat

IPG: "As the member for Maidenhead, TM has one of the most safest Conservative seats in the country. She had a tad under 66% of the vote in 2015".

Then we had the referendum, and Maidenhead voted to remain......
Not such a 'safe' seat now!

With that sort of majority do you really think she will get voted out if there were to be an election? Not unless the local party de-select her.

http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/728672/High-Court-Article-50-ruling-Law-expert-warns-against-Brexit-betrayal PARLIAMENT should think carefully about betraying the British people by blocking Brexit, as no-one was told MPs had the right to veto the EU Referendum result, a law expert has warned. Steve Peers, a professor of EU law, urged caution after the High Court’s bombshell decision on Thursday as hudges ruled Prime Minister Theresa May does not have the power to start the process of taking Britain out of the bloc without a Parliamentary vote. The EU law expert said: "No-one stood up and said Parliament had the right to overturn this [vote].
“I would be amazed, genuinely amazed, if MPs who have been given such an unambiguous message from the British people decided they would overturn the message of the British people.”

The judgement of the HIghCourt should not have been a "bombshell" as the Bill of Rights 1689 has been available to read for over 300 years. The Bill of Rights became a keystone of our constitution orecisely becase the executive (Charles I, Cromwell etc ) attempted to rule without parliament. If T May wants to give it a go the Whitehall Banqueting House is still there.

If some newspapers are staffed by poorly educated hacks and neo fascists such Richard Desmond then that is just too bad.

Just consider. Parliament in this country is not some kind of soviet era rubber stamp. It makes and unmakes the laws by which we live after debate and consulation. If the resolutions of Parliament could be simply over ridden by the executive it would all be a waste of time, we would be living in a dictatorship.

For that reason the "royal prerogaitve" cannot be used to create, repeal or vary domestic laws.

The High Court was very clear that its decision had nothing to do with brexit as such just that the invocation of S50 was not in the power of the executive becasue it would remove important citizen rights conferred by Act of Parliament. Simples.

Even David Davis has grasped the matter. He understands that it is of no use for parliament to pass a motion approving T May use of S50. There will have to be an Act of Parliament. (The chances of the govt winning on appeal are next to zero.)

The Daily Express and others are getting well ahead of themselves. The narrow referendum vote " advised" parliament (not the current P.M.) of a preference to leave the EU. In the typical lacksadaisical way of D Cameron how the leave process should be managed was ignored.

T May has a long record at the Home Office of wasting large sums of tax payers money on unwinnable cases. Her iill informed decision on S50 shows that she has learned nothing. It also presages a lot of future trouble. A wiser course would be to drop the appeal where she will not only lose but set a precedent in stone plsu a good few stinging remarks on top.

Parliament will not try and block brexit. What it will do is to ensure there is proper debate and control of the executive and that the process is carried out in a democratic manner not by a clique behind closed doors.

It is of course quite possible that over the next few years opinion may shift sharply when confronted with a dogs dinner for breakfast. If, say, 60-70% preferred to drop brexit then what ? By working with parliament T May is far more likely to get a good deal and avoid such a scenario. I fear that she cannot work in a collegiate sort of way - she has never been able to do so before.

Gina Miller - a new political name to me.

I must try to keep up.

Except...Parliament did to some degree debate it already when they decided to hold the referendum ....and then spend public money sending leaflets out to everyone telling them about the referendum where call me Dave said he'd follow the public wishes....how much public money were the brexit camp given to promote their views...where in that debate and that leaflet did it say no matter what the result we'll debate it again in Parliament ??

yes Caroline but you miss the point the legal issue was not the policy of brexit one way or the other and the court made that quite clear. The issue was and is can the government of the day override statute law using the royal prerogative? The answer is no. Only parliament can change statute law. The UKGov submission of inferred authority via the referendum was flayed in court.

It is worth bearing in mind that that has been the legal situation since at least 1610. The bloody civil war 1640-1648 was fought over essentially these issues i.e. is England to be governed by law and is parliament supreme?

All of the other bills concerning major changes in our relationship with Europe have requred an Act of Parliament and the debates were often fesity. I cannot see brexit being blocked in the Commons because of the referendum vote although the SNP can quite properly vote against.

The big change will be that the hows and whys and wherefores will no longer be considered secretly behind closed doors but will have to be debated by and voted on by Parliament. Surely right and proper in a democracy ? Additonally following a normal course of action will allay a lot of the fears of the remain camp who have most def not packed up and "got used to it".

T May and her clique simply do not want and do not understand democracy. Neither evidently does the Daily Mal which does not even have a basic concept of the idea of the rule of law. Of course her hands will be tied. British Prime Ministers have always had to work with the grain of the law and parliament. The last serious uses of the royal prerogative brought us the imbroglios in Iraq and Libya.

Such attitudes of T May and her clique will inevitably lengthen the brexit process and sour smooth negotiations with the 27.

If pursued to the point of the only deal on offer being a "hard exit" which parliament will not accept then the wheels will come off T May's trolley. She herself is the biggest potential roadblock to a successful brexit. Quite why people, believe in her after a catalogue of sorry failure at the Home Office I have no idea.

The UK could very likely do extremely well via a "Europe Light" including the Single Market and Customs Union and a restricted version of Freedom of Movement.

To get there the govt will need to have the Commons four square behind it and a lot of deft negotiation. At present there is very little to encourage belief that this might happen.

Not all Tory MPs are idealogues or as stupid as Liam Fox. A lot speak various EU languages fluently and have excellent contacts. Right now T May ignores this resource. Stupid, as by bringing a lot more of the party's know how into the action May would have a far stronger team.

Those who want this country run on populist lines as a fscist state have missed the boat. They should move to somewhere more congenial for their ideas such as Turkey or Byelorusse.

Democracy is the least worst form of government. (Churchill?)

There's one thing that concerns me. Would MPs want to know her detailed negotiating position? Anyone who has been involved in negotiating a contract starts off high (or low) and ends up in the middle.

If she said 'I want the UK to have this' knowing full well that she really means 'that', doesn't it lay her open to castigation if she comes back with something approaching 'that'?

'Not alone would many UK residents like to leave the EU, they would love to detach the country from the entire world. Island mentality.'

Rollo...I get the legal point....BUT...if nothing else this just proves Government don't really want to know or care what the public thinks or wants....they asked everyone to vote...they said what they'd do with the results....when they didn't get the result they thought they'd get they had no choice but to follow the law.......and no I'm not naive enough to think Governments ever actually care what the general public wants...this was an exercise in being seen to be doing what needed to be done, spending public money to get the outcome you wanted but being so out of touch with the general mood you didn't "win".
The only good point from all this....the fact the UK has been a civilized country for so long there are laws in place back to the 1600's and then some to draw upon...how many countries can say that.

How does it prove that Caroline? When Cameron didn't get the result he wanted he resigned.

It seems to me that the electorate were hoodwinked into thinking that leaving the EU was easy and could be done in a couple of months. Anyone who tried to point out the complications was labelled a scaremonger.

The current government seems determined to carry out the so called will of the people (about 25% of the population) while trying to get the best deal it can from the EU. It needs to do that within the law no matter what the gutter press says.

David Cameron allowed a series of setbacks to overtake his easy-going leadership. His most damaging feature was that he headed a party of toffs who were on the side of their few friends & financial backers while being coldly indifferent to the rest.

Tax cuts for the nation's wealthiest plus benefits spending cuts fuelled the perception of a leader who did not know or seem to care how the 'other half' survived. A fatal weakness as it eventually evolved.

Mrs May may be better - or she may not!

You also have to remember that the nations wealthiest already pay huge amounts of tax. the top 1% of earners pay 30% of taxes collected.The best-paid 3,000 contribute, on average, £2.6 million in tax per year. To listen to the hype, you’d be forgiven for thinking the richest pay not a penny in tax. The truth is that the UK income tax system is reliant upon a very small number of highly mobile rich people.

The majority of the population didn't vote to leave the EU either. I think Ken is absolutely correct too. I have heard many people who did vote out regretting the decision because they did not understand what was involved. They though we would just walk away closing our borders the next day.

Now that we are where we are, parliament is duty bound to get the best deal and have the say, indeed the final say, on the terms.

Call me Dave resigned because it was his version of throwing his toys out of the pram when the masses didn't do as they'd been told to do !
Agreed a lot of high earners pay a lot of the tax but there's also a lot that have very good accountants who legally make sure they don't pay as much tax corporate or personal.
Surely no one thought they'd leave Europe within hours, but if they did then shame on the Government as obviously these people weren't informed fully of the negative side from the Government point of view !!
As for the majority didn't vote to leave....the majority of those that bothered to vote did...if you didn't vote hard luck.

...and here's an interesting slant on how this all began....

https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2014/06/17/vernon-coleman-was-britain-taken-into-the-eu-illegally/

sitting back waiting for the remoaners to pick that article to pieces......

Very interesting items in there though thanks Maggie..

Wow, where do we go from here?!! I've always rather wondered why we had a referendum after joining the Common Market and not before! Now it would seem I might have just found out!

It does make you wonder how many times we've been lied to, for the sake of lining a few pockets, doesn't it?

ummm.....pretty much every day no doubt...