The now-enacted will of (some of) the people

[StefanAVFC]

She is such a word removed.

Quote

May: No deal is better than a bad deal. Anything which fails to respect the referendum and effectively divides our country in two would be a bad deal.

Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. Moron. 

Edited September 21, 2018 by StefanAVFC

[peterms]

Her statement was odd.  She looks bitter, and seems to think that this is a negotiation of equals, whereas serving Article 50 notice effectively undermined our position.

The Scottish Court of Session has now referred to the European Court of Justice the question of whether A50 can be unilaterally revoked.  This will add a new dynamic.

[Chindie]

Colour me shocked.

Doubled down on the red lines, blamed the EU for everything.

No deal ahoy.

Idiots.

[StefanAVFC]

This is actually happening isn't it? Internal Conservative politics driving the country off a cliff.

They should disband the party after this, or never get into power again.

Scum.

[StefanAVFC]

Peston, although a remainer, is a political editor and rarely is this direct.

He is savage here.

 

[snowychap]

Executive law-making and Brexit: Are Parliament’s hard-won safeguards being undermined?

Quote

Few subjects are as likely to cause people’s eyes to glaze over as the secondary legislation-making process and the intricacies of its oversight by Parliament. However, unusually ­— and quite rightly — this issue came to political and public prominence when the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 was being enacted. Why? Because the Act gives Ministers extraordinary legislative powers, as the House of Lords Constitution Committee emphasised in its interim report on (what was then) the Withdrawal Bill:

[T]he number, range and overlapping nature of the broad delegated powers would create what is, in effect, an unprecedented and extraordinary portmanteau of effectively unlimited powers upon which the Government could draw. They would fundamentally challenge the constitutional balance of powers between Parliament and Government and would represent a significant—and unacceptable—transfer of legal competence. We stress the need for an appropriate balance between the urgency required to ensure legal continuity and stability, and meaningful parliamentary scrutiny and control of the executive.

In the light of such concerns, attention focussed on establishing a ‘sifting’ mechanism, whereby a parliamentary committee or committees would examine proposed regulations, directing those considered to warrant heightened scrutiny into an appropriately onerous parliamentary process. The Bill was thus amended so as to accommodate a sifting process.  Schedule 7, paragraph 3 of the Act provides for a ministerial preference to make given regulations via the low-key ‘annulment’ process to be examined by a sifting committee. The committee, with the benefit of a copy of the draft regulations and the Minister’s reasons for preferring the annulment process, can then recommend that, contrary to the Minister’s view, the regulations should actually undergo heightened scrutiny. Importantly, however, making a recommendation is as much as a sifting committee can do: it cannot insist on a higher level of scrutiny.

It may appear, then, that the sifting process — a hard-won victory for parliamentarians disturbed by the extraordinary ministerial powers afforded by the Act — ultimately amounts to very little. However, while it is true that the Act does not tie Ministers’ hands legally — they are, as a matter of law, free to ignore a recommendation — the sifting process was intended, and expected, to have considerable political bite, by constraining Ministers’ political freedom to override recommendations. Thus schedule 7, paragraph 3(7) requires ministerial overrides of recommendations themselves to be justified to Parliament: ‘Before the instrument is made, the Minister must make a statement explaining why the Minister does not agree with the recommendation of the committee.’ Paragraph 3(8) goes on to say that if a Minister omits to make a statement under paragraph 3(7) before the instrument is made, he must instead make a statement explaining that failure. Meanwhile, paragraph 3(9) says that statements under paragraphs 3(7) and (8) ‘must be made in writing and be published in such manner as the Minister making it considers appropriate’. The intention, then, is to ensure that ministerial override of a sifting committee’s recommendation is not a politically straightforward matter, such that Ministers will think twice before taking such a step.

Against this background, recently published correspondence between the Chair of the House of Commons Procedure Committee and a Minister in the Department for Exiting the EU is noteworthy. In its report on the scrutiny of delegated legislation under the Withdrawal Act, the Committee noted that there had been concern during the passage of the Act that Ministers’ legal power to override recommendations might rob the sifting process of real teeth. The Committee therefore

‘welcome[d] the clear and unambiguous commitment of the Government, delivered on 18 July 2018 from the Despatch Box by a Minister during proceedings on the Bill, to making a written Ministerial statement to both Houses on every occasion they disagree with a recommendation from one or both of the sifting committees. We require this commitment to be honoured in full in each case that there is disagreement with a committee of either House.’

That ‘clear and unambiguous commitment’ was made by the Leader of the House of Lords, Baroness Evans of Bowes Park. She said:

I know that there has been concern that Ministers may ignore the [sifting] committees. [However,] I echo the sentiment of my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union when he said that there is likely to be a “political cost which will be significant” to going against a sifting committee recommendation. … Ministers will be required to make and provide to Parliament a Written Statement explaining themselves if they disagree with a recommendation from one or both of the sifting committees. Your Lordships can be assured that there will be no hiding place from the light of your scrutiny.

The Commons Procedure Committee was therefore no doubt surprised to receive a letter from DExEU Minister Chris Heaton-Harris MP — whose previous epistolary activities have also warranted public attention — informing it of the Government’s intended practice in this area. Referring to Baroness Evans’s remarks set out above, he said:

My Noble friend was referring to the amendments before the Other Place that day and did not specify where the written statement would be made. Let me clarify this. The intention is for a statement to be in the Explanatory Memorandum about why the Minister has not agreed with [the sifting committee’s] recommendation. We would also expect the Minister concerned to write to the Committee to set out the reasons why the recommendation is not being followed. In addition, … where a Minister does not agree with the recommendations of the Committee, the Minister will be prepared to appear in front of the Committee to clarify the rationale for that.

The place in which the statement appears may seem unimportant: and, indeed, the Act — as noted above — gives Ministers discretion to publish their reasons for disagreeing with the committee ‘in such manner’ as they consider appropriate. However, the timing of the publication is crucial — and, importantly, if the reasons appear only in the Explanatory Memorandum, they will be available only once the delegated legislation has been made. The point is made clearly by the Charles Walker MP, the Chair of the Procedure Committee, in his reply to the Minister. Walker points out to the Minister that the understanding that Government override of a recommendation ‘would carry a high political cost’ was instrumental in Parliament’s willingness to concede that legal override power in the first place. Walker continues:

[T]he Committee is unimpressed with the Government’s attempt to place a different interpretation on the commitment given by the Leader of the House of Lords. You argue that the means whereby the House is to be notified of a disagreement — through a section in the explanatory memorandum to be laid before Parliament only after the instrument in question — fulfils the statutory requirement in the Act. We do not see how this arrangement meets the widely-held expectation of a political cost to the Government from disagreement. At the very least we would expect a statement on the Government’s intentions, and the reasons for disagreement, to be made in public before, and not after, the irrevocable act of making the instrument in question. In our view it is discourteous to present a committee with a fait accompli in this manner.

The Government’s proposed approach is hard to square with the Act, given that it is required to ‘make’ a statement ‘before the instrument is made’, albeit that there is discretion over the manner of publication and albeit that the Act does contemplate Ministerial failures to make such statements (in which event the failure must itself be explained). But more broadly, the Procedure Committee is surely correct when it says that the Government’s proposed approach fails to meet ‘widely-held expectation(s)’ about how this scheme would function. The ‘high political cost’ of disagreement with the sifting committee was intended to counterbalance the Government’s legal power to override sifting recommendations, yet the proposal to make the reasons for disagreement publicly known — and thus subject to parliamentary and public scrutiny — only once delegated legislation is made removes much of the sting from the requirement to make a statement in the first place.

The Committee is flawlessly parliamentary in its language, noting that presenting sifting committees ‘with a fait accompli in this manner’ is ‘discourteous’. It might, however, reasonably have gone further. The sifting mechanism in the Withdrawal Act was intended as a means of addressing profound constitutional concerns about the balance between executive and parliamentary authority under the separation of powers. Any attempt to dilute that mechanism thus reignites precisely the fundamental constitutional questions that the sifting mechanism was intended to resolve. While, therefore, the Procedure Committee is doubtless right to question the courtesy of the Government’s stance, its propriety in other regards — most particularly in constitutional terms — might equally be doubted.

 

Edited September 21, 2018 by snowychap
Formatting

[a m ole]

‘incompetent’ would be too complimentary.

[lapal_fan]

Still won't happen   

[StefanAVFC]

3 minutes ago, a m ole said:

‘incompetent’ would be too complimentary.

Even incompetent word removed is too nice.

[peterms]

The hard border in NI is a particular problem.  But if we were to leave with no deal, would there not inevitably be a hard border?

[StefanAVFC]

Just now, peterms said:

The hard border in NI is a particular problem.  But if we were to leave with no deal, would there not inevitably be a hard border?

yes

[peterms]

Quick take on the speech from Stephen Bush here.

Quote

Theresa May's bizarre speech leaves the United Kingdom on the verge of a no-deal Brexit

In a statement that at times bore an only cursory relationship to reality, May further decreased her own room for flexibility.

Theresa May has rounded on the European Commission and her fellow heads of government in a speech which takes the United Kingdom ever closer to leaving the European Union without a deal.

The Prime Minister, whose proposals for the final Brexit deal have no realistic prospect of winning a majority in Parliament or winning support in the European Union, called on European member states to lay out their own proposals for the final EU-UK relationships in an astonishing statement that at times appeared to be barely adjacent to reality.

The truth is that the other 27 member states and the Commission have been crystal clear: the United Kingdom can either have a distant “low regulatory freedom, high market access” arrangement or Norway style deal, or a “high regulatory freedom, low market access” arrangement in the manner of Canada.

A Canada-style deal would require either a regulatory border in the Irish Sea – unacceptable to the DUP, whose support is vital to sustaining the Conservative government in office – or a hard border on the island of Ireland itself, unacceptable to Ireland, which as a member state holds a veto over the final free trade agreement. Neither arrangement could secure a majority in the House of Commons as it currently stands. The so-called “backstop” agrees that, in the event that the EU and the UK are unable to reach an agreement, Northern Ireland will remain within the regulatory orbit of the European Union, creating a regulatory border in the Irish Sea: an arrangement that May now describes as unacceptable despite having signed up to it in December 2017.

May's Chequers' proposals - which she doubled down on - please nobody. In the United Kingdom, they contain far too great a degree of rule-following for supporters of a Canada-type arrangement, but they provide too little market access to be supported by those who want a Norway-style deal. As far as the EU goes, the pick-and-mix of rights and obligations that May chooses are also unacceptable, as member states fear they risk unravelling the single market.

Is there any hope of avoiding a no-deal exit? Optimists will hope that the important part of May’s speech was not the sabre-rattling but the brief statement that the United Kingdom will bring forward alternate proposals to the backstop that maintains the territorial integrity of the United Kingdom: likely a proposal that the whole of the United Kingdom would have full regulatory alignment with the bloc in the absence of agreed solutions. But with so much goodwill eroded among the EU27 and with that deal very far indeed from what Conservative Brexiteers want, it is unclear whether that arrangement could win support among the EU, let alone at Westminster.

 

 

[peterms]

This event in Salzburg was meant to be managed so as to give her some kind of fig leaf for the tory conference, but it's all gone tits up.

Conference will be interesting.

[StefanAVFC]

5 minutes ago, peterms said:

This event in Salzburg was meant to be managed so as to give her some kind of fig leaf for the tory conference, but it's all gone tits up.

Conference will be interesting.

People's vote Tories are banned from organising. I bet ERG won't be.

[Amsterdam_Neil_D]

1 hour ago, andym said:

Over/under on 'respect the will of the British people' in May's statement?

Spot on,  and let me be very cleat about this,  correct.

[lapal_fan]

The knives will be out for her now, from her own party. Who'll be next in line for the shit show? 

[Amsterdam_Neil_D]

29 minutes ago, peterms said:

This event in Salzburg was meant to be managed so as to give her some kind of fig leaf for the tory conference, but it's all gone tits up.

Conference will be interesting.

You will need huge leaves to be fair, some of them are really tall.

[peterms]

A poetic Irish take on the border question.

 

[VILLAMARV]

Stephen Rea is bloody great. One of my favourite actors.

[ml1dch]

 "Throughout this process, I have treated the EU with nothing but respect. The UK expects the same, a good relationship at the end of this process depends on it.

"At this late stage in the negotiations, it is not acceptable to simply reject the other side's proposals without a detailed explanation and counter proposals."