Things are lively in Westminster tonight. According to the Guardian Theresa May has secured the backing of the Cabinet for a Brexit deal. And according to Guido Fawkes, Jacob Rees-Mogg has finally made his move against Theresa May. After saying that he had initially supported Mrs May’s efforts to negotiate Brexit, the Mogster now takes a different view:
Unfortunately the proposals for a UK/EU agreement released today do not match up to those early expectations. For four key reasons.
1. The proposed agreement will see the UK hand over £39 billion to the EU for little or nothing in return. The prospect of an agreed free trade agreement is as far away today as it always has been. The 15 page political declaration is neither binding nor clear in its intentions. If it aims to put in place the Chequers proposal it is neither workable nor respectful of the referendum result.
Next comes some side-of-the-bus stuff about nurses, just to remind us that JRM is only the “Member for the Eighteenth Century” in his manners. He is thoroughly twentieth century when it comes to Our NHS. The letter continues,
2. The proposed agreement would treat Northern Ireland differently than the rest of the UK. This is unacceptable to Unionists particularly in Northern Ireland, and Scotland where the SNP will seek to demand similar internal UK borders to weaken the Union.
A funny way of putting it, but presumably he means that Scotland would seek to be more deeply in the EU.
3. This agreement will lock us into an EU customs union and EU laws. This will prevent us pursuing a UK trade policy based around our priorities and economy. Without the ability to regulate
That word again
our own economy and form our own trade agreements we will lose out on the opportunities that Brexit affords us.
That was a key point.
4. Agreeing to be subject to the rules of an EU Customs Union, in contravention of the 2017 Conservative manifesto, without any votes or influence is profoundly undemocratic. This is compounded by the lack of any ability for the UK to unilaterally escape, making the UK a permanent rule taker.
Personally, though I do object to being subject to the rules of an EU Customs Union, I do not object because of a lack of democracy. However he has a good point about being locked in.
Cutting to the chase,
For these reasons I can not support the proposed agreement in Parliament and would hope that Conservative MPs would do likewise.
Yours
Jacob Rees-Mogg MP.
Whaddya think?
Sounds pretty tame. No leadership challenge?
Regarding your comment re: “that word again” – Just a small quibble in defense of JRM:
He could have just as easily and accurately said ” . . . without the ability to cast off outside, foreign regulation . . . “. To me, he isn’t advancing the idea that y’all need to be regulating your economy, but instead that y’all need to be removing the EU’s regulatory power over your economy.
After all, regulatory sovereignty can also involve choosing freedom from regulation. But you can’t do that if you are subject to foreign law. You can only plead.
Reminds me of Keith Joseph. Not necessarily a leader but a fine and rare mind in the Westminster Village of idiots…
It’s one thing to vote against the government, another to defy a three-line whip and quite another to defy a three-line whip on a vote of confidence. Has he the guts to do it? If so, who will join him?
“But you can’t do that if you are subject to foreign law. You can only plead.”
‘bobby b’ is spot on. If you have to beg permission to be free, you aren’t free. End of story.
On the basis of what has been publicised so far, this deal, or more accurately this totally one-sided stitch-up, is not worth paying £39billion for.
It is not worth having for free.
Heck, it wouldn’t be worth having if the EU was paying us £39billion to sign up to it.
Germany, which dominates the EU (as the late Leopold Kohr predicted would be inevitable in any unified Europe, way back in 1957), has clearly forgotten the similar vassal-state status the Treaty of Versailles imposed on it a century ago, and what it led to. Either that, or they remember it too well, and this is their way of serving revenge very cold indeed, regardless of any similar consequences it may have.
One further observation: Mrs May has rarely missed an opportunity to deploy the phrase ‘our precious Union’ when referring to the United Kingdom. The 15,188,406 Leave voters in England who have seen their votes effectively thwarted by the Northern Ireland issue may decide that, actually, the Union isn’t that precious to them. There is already a minor political party – the English Democrats – campaigning for English independence, and I would expect them to benefit from the BRINO debacle, particularly given the widespread disgust felt towards the Establishment parties. It just might be the case that it will be England, not Scotland, that will be the second country (after Eire) to withdraw from the United Kingdom.
And one key player is conspicuous by her absence; what role has the Queen played in all of this because notionally Mrs May is giving away her sovereignty. Has she agreed to it? Is she supporting this betrayal of our country? Is this what she’s wanted all along? Why hasn’t she stopped Mrs May and her commie Civil Servants?
I suspect if you guys just leave, the EU bureaucracy will pretty much fall apart, with other members threatening to do the same unless they lighten up on their overreaching regulation of just about everything. And I think they know it and are playing the “Know your place, peasant!” card to foment fear and uncertainty.
“When in the course of human events” worked for us, though finally we seem to be drifting toward serfdom.
I do have a dog in this fight, albeit at some distance.
So in a nutshell, the UK will pay 39 billion pounds to hitch their economy to the slowest-growing continent on earth thus relinquishing their ability to deal independently with the rest of the world, while becoming inexorably less democratic and free.
What more can you ask for.
I imagine that there is some EU apparatchik somewhere living in EU hell, afraid to come out and face his co-apparatchiks because he is the now-shamed person who proposed that the EU Articles should contain a unilateral opt-out Article 50 section.
He never thought it would be used. Those words were supposed to be pretty, but meaningless. Indeed, working for an organization that convinced working democracies that their first no-join votes were simply errors that needed to be done over, he was convinced that this was simply excess verbiage that would pacify those too stupid to see that the EU was inevitable.
They will never make that same mistake again. From now on, every EU agreement will contain a clause that says “you can check in, but you can never leave, unless we want you to leave.”
Funny, bobby b, that is the same clause which exists sub silentio in the US Constitution.
Laird: *sour expression*
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Still, maybe in wobbling back & forth between Federalism and Nationalism, there is some sort of stability.
On the other hand (maybe it’s the 3rd hand), conditions in A certainly can create conditions in B that are just not acceptable.
As when fouling the river in one community or state ends up fouling the river for all the communities or states (or private waterfront owners too) downstream.
As when the mess of Sanctuary City of San Fran slops over into the surrounding communities and then the adjoining states and then ….
But that’s all old news, so I’m just sayin’. Lots of cases where life goes smoother for everyone when the laws are the same across the nation. Lots of cases where life is a mess if you let the FedGov dictate everything to the States. So now we’re all stuck with Medicare, with FedGov deciding what is or isn’t legally “marriage,” with what individual bakers must make or cannot make, etc.
I am toying with the notion that Pres. Lincoln wanted to destroy slavery as much, or almost as much, as he wanted to preserve the Union. Had he left the Confederate states alone to secede, slavery there would not have been within his power to end; the Civil War ended up serving both ends.
I certainly can’t prove that and I don’t know whether even Mary Todd knew, but I think it’s worth considering.
And the work and the vision of the Founders would have failed, which would have been bad enough and the thought might have cut like a knife to his heart.
And it would have done so on his watch….
Personally, I can see various angles to the thing.
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Or, of course, we can go all cynical and say no no no it was really about rescuing the North and tariffs and whatnot. But I’ll leave that sad duty to Lew Rockwell and the von Mises Institute crowd.
As a Belgian citizen, i wrote before the referendum that the EU will obtain a huge price for your departure and that you will end with a Corbyn Government
We are there
The Labour Party will support this agreement in the House of Commons, eventually only with 60-70 MPs abstaining
After 2 or 3 years, this agreement will crumble, notably with an Eurozone crisis
Is there not an issue around speed of journey? It took us 40 years to get to this point and it was never going to be realistic that we get from here to a desired fully out and succeeding at it end state in one giant leap. The EU is a monster. I think we must step away from it progressively. The deal is a shitshow. But it does take us legally out of the EU and not subject to a whole realm of non-trade stuff. Wars are won battle by battle. The cliché ‘the perfect is the enemy of the good’ has some merit. Let’s get half way out (but legally there) and re-marshall our energies.
The Deal is a pile of treason so large that we need a national apology to Lord Haw Haw.
There is no reason why Corbyn would piss on millions of his own voters who support Leave to enable the FFC to keep going to 2022. By which time the Labour Party might well have ceased to exist itself. That their apparent “policies” change with whichever ZaNu idiot is announcing them is a measure of their present cohesion and the fact that they are fighting like ferrets in a sack already.
May is a walking disgrace, It took 5 hours and a team of SCS bouncers yesterday to get her own Cabinet of Cowards to pretend they are on her page of the Hymn sheet. I do not believe this vile garbage will get through the HoC.
May is stupid enough to call another snap GE–but the Tory Hierarchy will want that less than a sulphuric acid enema.
And even Corbyn –though a Marxist fool and villain –possesses too much animal cunning to shove a sharp stick in his own eye in order to help Treason May out.
Patrick–The POS “Deal” takes us out in name only and puts under the EU’s thumb for good and paying loads more for being there.
It is an absolute betrayal whose authors deserve to be charged with Treason and Sedition, convicted and then spend several decades in prison. And that would be merciful compared to how I would see them disposed of.
Two ministers now gone. The Dam is beginning to break. She can’t get it through the HoC after her own –previously weak–supporters turn against her betrayal.
Her Britannic Majesty’s first Prime Minister was Winston Churchill, now she has Mrs May, (after a parade mainly comprised of rogues and scoundrels) with Mr Corbyn waiting in the wings. How could the political culture of the UK be sicker?
Hirohito said in August 1945, we must endure the unendurable. This is what Mrs May is offering, we might as well raise the Bismarck for the formal signing ceremony of this deal.
Now it seems that Bliarite Remainiac stooge Starmer has appeared on TV this morning and said ZaNu will NOT be voting with May. Since he is prime remainiac I think we can accept that as the truth. Which means her last feeble lifeline has gone. She can’t get her betrayal through and is a spent force. Ministers who stick with her will share her fate.
She is a delusional mental case as well as a traitor so I believe she will literally have to be dragged out of Downing St, screaming, by her hair.
Well, Northern Ireland will have to be separated, its the only way to make any credible deal work.
Also, 2 years, and these useless incompetent clowns can’t even work out a deal.
Clearly, our lazy politicians who have longer holidays than school children, have the mental age and competence of primary school brats. This should and could have been done in 2 weeks, not 2 years.
3 Ministers gone now.
The Rout begins.
Is it true the “agreement” will be signed in a railway carriage in northern France?
Mr Ecks, I think that Lord Haw Haw was hard done by, he was only convicted of treason because he falsely claimed a British passport when he was American, and he was rather stitched-up. He owed the UK far less than the FFC, so yes, he should be posthumously apologised to, and should not be a byword for treachery.
Mr Ed–I don’t know that what happened to him was unjust. He was a willing stooge of socialist evil.
The injustice from my point of view is that May wasn’t going to get the same for doing far more.
Or, as it now hopefully looks–attempting to do far more.
Mr Ed–I don’t know about that. He was a willing stooge of socialist evil.
The injustice from my point of view is that May wasn’t going to get the same for doing far worse.
Or, hopefully in light of this mornings developments, attempting to do far worse.
So (continuing my prior comment), is this an actual draw, or are we still watching someone’s hand move slowly – but just a bit faster than before – towards their holster?
The original US constitution – and the Confederate constitution – were silent on the question of secession. That the intent was to create a nation “united as regards foreign concerns while keeping us separate as regards domestic ones” and that it did the first part – there were US ambassadors to foreign sovereignties, not ambassadors for each state – offers support to those who read it as preventing secession. (The seceders, of course, contended that the second part was being compromised.) I think we may take it the Civil War absolutely decided the question.
The EU had clause 50 and many other indications of its being an alliance of still-sovereign states, so any analogy with the US Civil War is wholly inapplicable. The ultimate intent of the EU’s founders is quite clear, but so are the actual legalities of the present time.
The Hon. JRM has truly stuck the boot in in this clip, in the Commons today, the final part a reference to writing a letter of no-confidence in Mrs May.
“Brexit”, ha ha.
Maybe the Queen will act as the final guarantor of her people’s sovereignty and liberties and withhold her Assent.
Fat chance, but it would be fun and serious historical relevance for her if she did!
staghounds,
As you know I’m sure, Her Britannic Majesty is barely more powerful than was President Kallinin of the Soviet Union, who signed orders to send his wife to the GULAG on Stalin’s orders, he reportedly wept with grief and powerlessness as he did so. The Queen’s only power is to embarrass, but Mrs May appears to not be capable of suffering from embarrassment.
He has not crossed the Rubicon until he submits a letter of no confidence. Until then, this is just noise.
It is a terrible agreement but I find it hard to get too worked up about it. Having spent the last 12 years negotiating with government departments for a living (both here and in the rest of the world) I’m certainly not surprised at their incompetence.
Had the UK government apparatus been any good at negotiating, Cameron would have returned with a better/any deal back in 2016 and the UK would probably have voted to remain.
As a Leave voter, and having benefitted from government machine’s inadequacy then, it seems odd to be angry about it now.
He has done so.
Staghounds–You are not even British so what do you care?
Pete North has a couple of good articles on this topic on his website today.
Hard to see any way out now except for ‘no deal’. Even if we applied to join the EEA the EU would still insist on a backstop, which may well look the same as that which is currently proposed (which is Norway +++, not Norway- or Canada+++).
Whilst I don’t have much sympathy for Mrs May it seems to me that the EU has insisted on things that they really don’t need to insist on and I don’t know what the catalyst would be for them to back down (except until after we’ve fallen out of the EU, and, more to the point, the single market).
I wish the gentleman had acted against Traitor May long ago – but Jacob Rees-Mogg has now acted and I applaud his action.
It is sad that he has ruled himself of becoming Leader, but that is his decision to rule himself out – and I respect his decision.
It is not “lame” to say that Mrs May must no longer be leader, but I should not be leader either. It is actually a show of DUTY (to country – and to liberty) and HUMILITY.
I must pay tribute to Mr Ecks – for longer than any of us, you have understood that Mrs May is an enemy of the independence of the country and an ENEMY OF LIBERTY IN GENERAL. And, UNLIKE myself, you have used to correct “Anglo Saxon” language to describe this terrible person. I am much too timid in my language – for which I apologise.
Thank you for your kind words Mr Marks.
She wasn’t hard to spot as a malicious nutter or as Head Girl gone rancid.
Quite so Mr Ecks – but you spotted her right away, and I did not.
I don’t recall the part on the leave/remain information leaflet that said ‘whatever you decide we will seek the best deal available after a protracted negotiation that will cost your government (or you) a lot of money with all sorts of ifs, buts and maybes tacked on.’ I thought it simply said ‘leave the EU.’
I am sure greater minds than mine can come up with all sorts of reasons why there is a deal, and even more who can tell me why it must be so complicated. Trouble is, I don’t care. I voted leave because I wanted us out of the festering house of cards in Brussels, if only so we could watch the EU’s disintegration from a safe distance.
Still, while we all knew all along that a politician’s word was never based in truth, at least we now have a concrete example of saying one thing but having no intention of doing it.
A nice quote I saw on Guido Fawkes
Well I’m from the US and I say…..
OK, I got nothing.
We have plenty of our OWN problems thankyouverymuch.
@Mr Ed
I have always wondered what it would have been like had Halifax succeeded Chamberlain instead of Churchill in May 1940, as so many Conservative Mps wanted. Now I know.
I’m not sure there was a Churchill available, was there?
Telegraph is reporting Gavin Williamson is chief whip – hee, hee – written by Computer Generated Journalism Software – the stuff that they deny they use.
You can always tell human mistakes from machine generated anomalies: human errors always make some kind of sense but machine generated anomalies just come over as nonsensical – they do obey algorithmic rules but it is not text as we know it Jim.
When this stuff gets through it means they have not proof-read properly or not at all. Some examples from the Daily Express:
Daily Express news article 06/06/2018:
“For sure, not planning for something leads to disaster. Someone needs to make sure that they ahem the reigns and they are not spread out and un-foot by so many different parties.”
Daily Express news article 07/06/2018:
“When my of school age I out my life in half terms. On when I was at no more than a half off ourselves wrong.”
All the mainstream press is now using this software.
Churchills are rare. Better PMs than May are not so rare – and could suffice to deal with the very much lesser threat we face. I note, merely as a likely datum (no use crying over old spilt milk), that if Gove had not so messed up, we’d have Boris as PM, with Davis and Leadsom (and Gove) as senior cabinet ministers.
Then again, if you recall, this was meant to be just a rerun of the trick Harold Wilson pulled with the renegotiation of 1974/75. Fortunately for us “Call Me Dave” Cameron wasn’t as cynical or wiley as old ‘arold (who smoked a pipe in public and cigarettes in private)
So when Cameron returned from his round of “EU negotiations” with little more than a flea in his ear, a bad taste in his mouth and an enlarged (and bleeding) butthole, he had no alternative but to call his own bluff and push the button on the EU referendum.
He did so in the full and certain knowledge that the British would never have the balls to go against the advice of every single political party bar the “golf club bores, nutters and racists of UKIP” (I forget the actual slur he made)
So the complexities of leaving (real or imagined) were never considered, because it could never, ever happen. Could it Dave?
By accident and incompetence it looks like we’re leaving through the door marked “Hard BRExit” without paying the largely imaginary “divorce” settlement which in and of itself will be a massive blow to EU finances.
I doubt that it will be the final, fatal blow to the EU. Someone else will have to deliver the Coup de gras, but when history looks back upon the failed Eunion, I suspect that BRExit will be seen as the tipping point.
All because Dave Cameron was an incompetent fool. Still a traitor though, just like “Dress Up” May.
…to the ninth bolgia with you…and that right quick!
The 1974-75 UK Renegotiation of EEC Membership and Referendum
Mr. Ecks;
I’m a tenth or more generation citizen of the United States of America, what do you mean I’m not British?
England is my own country’s mother. The modern history of human liberty came from those islands, and because their people have done more to create and advance the idea of individual sovereignty and responsible, limited government than the rest of the world combined. Englishmen invented the “inalienable” privileges that let me live not a slave. I speak English, and all my ancestors who weren’t born under the stars and stripes first drew breath under the Union jack. Every house I’ve ever lived in stood on what was once British North America.
And I care because I have English friends, and because I have spent a couple of weeks or a month there every year since 1994.
And mainly I care because every time liberty is diminished, the earth gets a little darker.
As The Mister said, isn’t the world round, and we all on it?
Mr. Ed-
It would be an interesting constitutional question if the Queen witheld assent. The very short 1967 statute says that an Act is duly enacted upon assent certainly implies that it’s not if there’s no assent. And it goes on to refer to “the manner in which an Act of Parliament is required to be endorsed in Her Majesty’s name.”
If endorsement is required, and she says no…
“He never thought [Article 50] would be used.”
And Cameron never thought we’d vote to leave. The arrogance and complacency of the Europhiliac knows no bounds.
staghounds
November 16, 2018 at 12:08 am:
A hundred, thousand, million YES’s !!!!
(And to hell about the misuse of the apostrophe in this case. Thus say I, Grammatical Judge, Jury, and Executioner Extraordinaire!)
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And we Children of Britain do love our Mother Country, much as, like many loving children, we weep for her shortcomings and excesses, and chide her as well. We still feel part of the Family, even though we’ve moved out of the house.
We’re not wild about that Marmite crap, though.
bobby, next time you’re in Rockford please let me take you out for caviar. I’m afraid I threw away the marmite I’d bought to try. It only got an F-.
All very nice Staghounds.
So respect your forbears and stop pushing kneejerk defeatism every time you tune in here.
I watched JRM’s news impromptu conference. It truly is a shame he’s taken himself out of consideration for PM.
You should just leave with no deal, as he suggests, and go under the WTO rules. You could even cut a sweet trade deal with the US; Trump has already offered it. You hold all the cards; it is astounding that no one seems to recognize that and just call Brussels’ bluff. They have nothing.
I presume Mr. Reece-Mogg can count.
staghounds,
The Royal Assent is nowadays (and since Queen Victoria’s day, she was the last monarch to personally sign a Bill into being an Act) given by a ‘Commission’ a panel of three IIRC Lords who are appointed to signify the Royal Assent to a Bill. I assume that technically Bills go to into the Queen’s papers and she is aware of then, but she doesn’t even personally sign Bills, she presumably indicates somehow that assent is given. That 1967 Act tidied up the process and repealed the Act which started the process of Commissioners having the power to signify the Royal Assent, that Act was from 1541 and it was Henry VIII Bill of Attainder on Catherine Howard. Good Old Hal didn’t want to sign personally the Act executing his wife (it would have upset him to recite the crimes etc.) so he got Commissioners to do it for him. But in 1967 the 1541 Act was repealed and replaced (for the Royal Assent), but as the Act appears to have been repealed, the execution of Catherine Howard is no longer covered by a Bill of Attainder, so she was murdered rather than executed, in the technical sense.
Would the Queen refuse assent? I doubt it, given her living memories of 1936 and her uncle’s abdication. She saw how the Monarch was pushed out by the politicians.
BBC Monitoring Twitter feed reports that Iran’s (state-run) media describe Mrs May deal as the worst in British history.
So if they can see that from Tehran, why can’t Mrs May party? She’s even lost the Mullahs.
The “Express” newspaper had an anti Mrs May surrender to the European Union article today – I was pleasantly surprised, as I though the “Express” (under its new owner – “Trinity Mirror” Corporation) had sold out to side of Traitor May.
Predictably the utterly vile “Daily Mail” is totally supportive of Traitor May – no doubt seeing Mrs May as a new Sir Oswald Moseley, who the Daily Mail supported in the 1930s due to his desire to “unite Europe” under German leadership (which is also the objective of Mrs May). We must be ruled by Germany “for the good of the car industry” you see. I am sure the CBI approve – just as the old Federation of British Industry (Corporatists scumbags and traitors) did in the 1930s.
It should also be noted that “Olly” Robbins is an associate of BOTH Mrs May (Traitor May) and Mr Jeremy Corbyn. The Punch and Judy show FAKE fight at “PMQs” every week hides a deep alliance between the radical left (such as the “Guardian”) and the Corporatist “right” (such as the “Daily Mail”). It is akin to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939.
No I am not exaggerating – I firmly believe that Mrs May, rather than see British independence from the European Union regained, would ally with the Labour Party to maintain the rule of the European Union over this land. That is why it is essential that Mrs May must be removed as leader of the Conservative and Unionist Party.
“Big Business” has been funding the far left (such as “The New European” – a publication that pretends to hate Mrs May, whilst they are secretly on the same side) for years – in order to crush British independence. The objective of the left and the Corporatist “right” (Mrs May, the Daily Mail and so on) is the same – it was summed up by the character of “O’Brian” in George Orwell’s book “1984”. A boot coming down on a human face – FOR EVER.
“No, no, no, Paul, you are being PARANOID – it is really all for the good of the car industry…..”
I am sick and tired of old lies on May’s lips every time she opens her mouth. the lies have been around since Ted the traitor Heath gave away our Sovereignty in the first place. I had hoped to see his head on Westminster Bridge, and now May has betrayed us all and Democracy no longer exists in this benighted Country. She is a disgrace to the post she holds. What was worse though is that last week I assume she placed a wreath at the Cenotaph in honour of those who died, what a shameless thing for a woman who was just planning to give us away again. She is the pits as a certain tennis player would have it totally unacceptable in any company. Away with her and her stupidity.
What Derek Buxton said.
It’s not defeatism, it’s being (so far) defeated. Cassandras will cassandra, won’t we?
These was this strange assumption at the time of the referendum that Brexit would just happen once leave won, and it was obvious to me before all the votes were even counted that your supposed servants would fail to obey the popularly expressed will. I hoped, by pointing out that prospect, to get leavers to see that winning the referendum was only a feeble first step and get them fired up for a long fight.
I admit I was surprised by how blatantly the Government refused to perform, and by the contempt its members showed for the election result and its command. There wasn’t the slightest pretense that the Government intended to effectively repudiate the mastery of Brussels, and there still isn’t.
Pretending that your Government will do what you told it to do won’t help. It makes me sad, but Westminster is spitting on you every day.
As Washington is on us, but that’s a different conversation.
Royal Assent-
I love this obscure legal stuff.
It’s interesting that the Act only describes how the Assent may be given, and that no procedure is listed for withholding it. The last time it was done was by good old Queen Anne, and she did it in person at the usual Lords Assent day- which of course no longer happens.
I believe the Monarch would have to make a public statement that she refused her assent, and also make it directly to Parliament under her seal and signed in her own hand. She’s have to do it PDQ after the final Division- before the Commissioners could give the Assent.
PROBABLY her refusal would be grounds for her deposition by Parliament.
Parliament could, as it did in 1688, find that she had abandoned her position by refusing the Assent and declare someone else the Monarch- or declare some Parliamentary creature to be Regent during the vacancy of the Throne, which could last forever.
It would be very interesting. This Queen might be able to make it stick. but the next monarch won’t be able to.
Parliament cannot depose the sovereign any more than the sovereign can abolish parliament. (Legally, that is. As Burke mentioned briefly, after noting these facts in An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs, the limits on mere power if it is uninterested in constitutionality are less strict.) The case of 1688 is not applicable: it was the monarch’s abruptly fleeing the kingdom, not any prior acts, that created the legal pretext for treating James II and VII as having abdicated.
Obviously such acts would be very constitutionally dangerous to whoever initiated them, though less so if they seemed a compelled response to prior constitutionally dangerous acts by the party against whom they were done.
At present, it seems preferable to hope that ten more letters have or are being written. (And to pressure one’s MP where useful or otherwise try and help the process along.)
I’ve written mine.
No, but the comparison is insulting to Molotov and Ribbentrop!
Good point.
If I were writing for Parliament, I would say that the Queen’s refusal of Assent to a Bill was as much an abdication as James’ ditching the Seal and leaving the country- that it’s the monarch’s responsibility, not to decide upon bills, but to give Assent in every case- that the Assent is merely a procedural act now. Her refusal of it shows a fundamental intent to refuse to carry out her responsibility in the future, so it’s an abdication.
Again, I don’t have the slightest thought that she actually will- Seeing some of the laws, I think she understands her duties just as well as Victor Emanuel II did..