There is nothing, as far as I can see, Great about Theresa May's proposed Brexit Bill.
It will allow Brexit to be negotiated without parliamentary approval.
It will pass massive power to ministers without any checks or balances in place.
It will undermine our democracy as a result.
And since the Lords are unlikely to be able to block it the Commons has to.
The prospect of Conservative divisions on the issue loom large.
But will Labour exploit that to defeat the government? I wish I had confidence that it will. But I am not sure as yet.
The need for coherent opposition has never been greater. We can only hope it will be delivered.
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Absolutely agree. Some tactics – unless your MP is a Tory right winger , get in touch and ask for their assurance that they will not vote to repeal the European Communiies Act until the Brexit terms are known. If you get an equivocal reply go and see them.
Contact Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonell and ask them for the same assurance as far as Labour is concerned. Do not expect much of an individual reply but the weight of such representations may affect their thinking which I suspect is largely unformed at the minute.
In excluding Parliament from even having a say over the way Article 50 is invoked, or the process of repealing the ECA, Theresa May seems to have interpreted the #Brexit decision to “take back control” as a personal message to her.
There is a clear authoritarian streak that runs through May. Will we wake up one day to discover that websites like this one have been taken off air?
With BoJo around, you can hardly blame her for that.
May has always been a control freak, as a number of her former colleagues and civil servants have confirmed. but she also has enemies in her own ranks, though the ‘one nation’ numbers are sorely reduced – the remains of the Remainers. I suspect she will get her way as she is both clever and vindictive.
This site is secure – too useful for MI5. That’s why I don’t use a pseudonym -wouldn’t like to put the spooks to any trouble. ‘If there’s a blacklist, I want to be on it.’ Especially in this excellent company!
Agree entirely, David, and with your last couple of points in particular. Mind you, it wouldn’t take GCHQ much time to find out whose behind a pseudonym.
Some think that since Parliament apparently consented to the original vote, everything that follows on from that point has already been consented to.
Labour – infact any opposition – will be painted as preventing BREXIT from happening by the Tories and the MSM.
The Tories are just playing the numbers game using the chance to take us out of Europe as a boost for the 2020 election chances.
So imagine that – 4 more years of Tory rule already being fought for NOW!
House of Commons? Coherent? A contradiction in terms? Too many lawyers and journalists and too few others.
One would like to think that, when push comes to shove, most UK parliamentarians, whatever their bias, will lean towards upholding the supremacy of Parliament. ‘Remain’ or ‘Leave’ the ‘Brexit’ operation has been ill-conceived, incompetently managed and is intrinsically undemocratic – according to our constitution.
Who knows how Theresa May will play it? She is, all said & done, a politician with a primary objective of ensuring her party’s re-election in 2020. However simplistic her media sound-bites, the legal complexities should not be underestimated. I find David Allen Green (‘Jack of Kent’) a useful source of info in this regard.
As you say, Richard, it is far from clear that the PLP will (or even can) provide a clear, focussed and forensic opposition to May and her crony Cabinet, which consists of some pretty ruthless in-fighters.
Unable to count on Labour, one’s best hope is for the Tories to be so divided that they implode – but I wouldn’t bet on that. They are the masters of pragmatic survival – irrespective of any damage they inflict on the country in the process.
I can almost guarantee that anyone who wants BREXIT to be dealt with properly by Parliament will be portrayed as slowing the process down and being anti – BREXIT.
In fact I feel that you can count on it.
Already happening. Try arguing for any sort of parliamentary scrutiny of Brexit and you will be shouted down as anti-democratic eeyore trying to undermine the referendum vote.
Oh the vote!
Now being defended with (metaphorical) cudgels and baseball bats – it is a thing to be revered, to not be sullied by anything so inconvenient as questions or debate.
For anyone interested, David Allen Green’s website is: http://jackofkent.com
How can Labour look coherent with the likes of Jess Phillips being so negative on yesterday’s Peston On Sunday? It’s good to hear the Conservatives mirroring Labour soundbites though.
Unfortunately I think the best opposition to the Brexit bill and indeed the Brexit process in general is now from within the Tories’ own ranks, the more sensible and courageous Tory MPs like Anna Soubry and Nicky Morgan (God, it feels weird to say that) along with the SNP. Labour under Jeremy Corbyn was never going to present any coherent opposition to Brexit, one of the reasons why, as a (now former) Labour member, I would very much have preferred an Owen Smith win. Corbyn didn’t even issue a statement in response to May’s speech yesterday, leaving that to Emily Thornberry, and even that only happened some five hours after the speech itself. I’m baffled by Corbyn’s unwillingness to comment on Brexit.
Never has the country needed a strong opposition, and never has it had a weaker one.
Corbyn won’t comment because he’s been a committed Brexiteer for decades, Kate. And while it would appear he’s happy enough to fudge/be pragmatic about the Trident replacement issue for the sake of Labour party unity it’s been apparent since the Brexit campaign that he’s simply not willing to change his deeply entrenched view on Brexit.
The problem is that the brexit voters were a coalition of very disparate views many quite contradictory.
The hard brexitors who wish to float off into a free-market as espoused by Gove and Fox. We will just drop all tariff barriers and everyone else will do likewise, no negotiations necessary, and the world will be so much better. Evidence free fantasy politics!!
Then there what I call the Scargill position: Britain Cuba and Venezuela form a progressive trading block that puts the world to rights.
Then we have those who thing we can negotiate a position as part of the single market without accepting free movement of labour. Good luck with those negotiations!
Then there are those who thing we can successfully negotiate a basket of trade agreement with various other countries over a weekend next april.
And finally we have the despicables who just didn’t like foreigners. The little Englander Mail and Express readers.
Those positions are all mutually exclusive. The reason why May doesn’t want to put this to a vote, either of the public or parliament, is that none of them has support that extends much beyond single figures in terms of percentages.
Whichever we end up with must be put to the public in a referendum!!
Interesting.
But look what happened during the EU referendum and know that it can happen again. These factions as you depict them do overlap and they certainly make use of each other.
I appreciate it is naive to look for anything resembling balance on this topic in this forum, but even so I’m a bit puzzled by what seems to be being argued.
Parliament passed the Single European Act, which subordinated our law to European law whenever the two conflict – thereby depriving itself of its former absolute sovereignty over the making of our laws.
Whatever else it means or doesn’t mean, Brexit certainly must entail the restoration of that sovereignty. Any other position would be self-contradictory. That entails repeal at some stage of the SEA.
So what is all this fuss about May having announced inclusion of a so-called “Great Repeal Bill” in the Queen’s Speech? Hasn’t she said that it will be enabling only, to be given effect only at the point when Britain finally departs from the EU (meanwhile all current laws, including those which have emanated from the EU and been taken automatically into British law, of course remain on the statute book? This is unconnected with whatever trade and other terms may be nogotiated to apply after exit.
Unless it’s only another way of saying “we don’t like Brexit, so stop it” – which doesn’t merit a response – what is so objectionable about that?
And it’s a bill, which in the final analysis means it doesn’t become an act unless and until parliament debates it and passes it. In what way is that any more “undemocratic” than the process gone-through by any legislation whatsoever?
It hands subsequent power to the Executuve – and therein lies the risk
No it doesn’t.
It will only come into force at the point when Britain exits. Which means in practice that the bill’s passing will make absolutely no difference whatever to the degree to which the sitting government does or doesn’t have a free hand in the negotiations, which will by definition have ended before it takes effect (meanwhile status quo prevails).
That’s the logic of it.
However that’s not of course the whole story. The introduction of a “Repeal” bill this far ahead is symbolic: it’s politically designed to send an unmistakable signal.
To judge from the hysterical reaction to it of some commenters (if the cap fits…), it has certainly succeeded in that aim.
It will pass power – that is it’s aim
This is a Dissolution of the Monastries Bill that let’s the executive decide the split of the spoils
That’s very dangerous
Robert
Point 1:
Do you mean the sort of balance we had before the vote? The lies that were told? That sort of balance we got in the Daily Mail yesterday about Remainers sabotaging the effort to leave?
There is no real balance in the MSM Robert – the BBC is still besieged by complaints about its coverage of the vote. Those of us here come to talk about the things that don’t get aired properly elsewhere – an act of balancing in itself.
So please don’t insult me and others when you talk of a ‘lack of balance’.
Point 2:
The fact that you talk about the ‘restoration of sovereignty’ as you do more than indicates your disposition on the BREXIT issue. So we can safely assume that you are just here to gloat. So now you’ve gloated. Perhaps you can go now?
Point 3:
Pseudonyms:- I use one because a colleague (a reader) read my comments on here online and pointed out that I may be in contradiction of my org’s rules on engaging in political debate. I have to work with local Councillors and I can assure you that there are a lot bullies in the Labour Party where I work. I like and need my job. I’m scared. So I need a ‘pen’ name.
PSR
I can’t pretend to follow the way your mind works, so I won’t.
Naked partisanship has its points I suppose. But to be incapable of recognising it as such and to misrepresent it as “balance”, at the same time choosing to be personally affronted at something well within the bounds of normal debate, seems to me to be a bit extreme if you don’t mind my saying so (doubtless, you will).
And you’re entirely mistaken (assuming you care) in the inference you draw about what you term my “disposition” (by which you clearly mean my PREdiposition) on the Brexit issue. I happen to have voted ‘remain’, for reasons I won’t bore people with. That has nothing at all to do either one way or the other with “sovereignty”, which is no more than a factual categorisation of a legislature’s status under its country’s law at any given time. To differentiate between alternative possibilities we do need words: what words would you choose, if not “absolute sovereignty” as opposed to “circumscribed sovereigny”?
Why you raise the issue of pseudonyms (I didn’t) is beyond me. I’m afraid. Sorry.
Essential to me that at the very least Parliament has a right to approve the terms of any Brexit and I am also optimistic that if what seems like might the current hard deal was put to a referendum again, it would go the other way. Anecdotally at least, I’m appalled at the number of people for whom Brexit was a simple protest vote and who will admit they didn’t really know anything much about the actual idea they were voting on. Another referendum would at least have the benefit of a debate on concrete terms and not just the ideas of fantasists and xenophobes that Neil License summarises – truth spoken as jest – above.
As I understand it once Article 50 is triggered it cannot be withdrawn and negotiations continue for up to two years. Therefore Parliament could only express a view on the proposed UK negotiation position which represents the best possible outcome the Government can envisage (thus revealing the opening gambit and hence unlikely). The final outcome is likely to be different. If this is found to be wanting and sufficient reason to seek rejoining it will be under the terms of Art.49 ie accepting the Euro, Schengen et al.
This should be a day for a little celebration. Theresa May has just saved the lives of 326 people. Those are the rough number of MPs whose lives would otherwise be in jeopardy from a population armed with hammers and pitchforks if the UK participated in electing MEPs in 2019.
GreenLJ allowed Hunt to argue that his Ministerial statements to impose a contract on junior doctors couldn’t be evidence of his ntent to impose the contract, and nobody ever believed he would impose it. So accountability of ministers to Parliament has had another nail in its coffin.
I don’t really think this Government likes democracy any longer and is determined to end it bit by bit, as it is doing with the NHS.
No government likes “democracy”.
Probably that’s why there is little of it about.
Sure, we get the right to vote. Usually for the same collection of people who have been educated to a high-point in idiocy.
Telling the difference between parties was getting hard. Now we can chose between clearly right-wing idiocy, and clearly left-wing idiocy.
So it’s the May idiocy going for broke and making a grab for Total Power, while the Corbyn idiocy stands on the sideline wondering if it should argue against brexit (which it wants anyway, since the Labour Party has never really like the EU much) or just continue to stand around with fingers in ears, whistling, while the pound sinks lower than Cameron’s belly.
Whatever happens, those at “The Top” could care less…they’ll continue to amass wealth since it’s a two-horse race and they’ve backed both.
The invented “revolutions” for such oligarchies.
Ooh Robert sweetheart!
You’re such a card!!