Government should obey the law.
Parliament should obey the rules when legislating.
The law Parliament is seeking to pass is an unusual law seeking to control the conduct of the Prime Minister in an international negotiation.
It is not a criminal law creating a new crime. There are no proposed penalties, fines or prison sentences in it should the PM not obey it. It is not a general law applying equally to all of us, nor even a law always applying to government. It is a Parliamentary instruction or political opinion on one issue at one time passed as a law.
This Bill has passed this far without a Money Resolution to approve the large extra spending entailed in delaying our exit, and without Queens Consent to Parliament taking over the power vested in government to negotiate treaties.
The law courts wisely decided not to back the government’s Parliamentary critics over prorogation. Recent events have shown, as the government argued, the prorogation did not prevent Parliament returning to the issue of Brexit and making its views clear anyway. Parliament will have yet more time to debate Brexit in October after the conference break.
The attempt to control the PM’s conduct of an international negotiation through the courts is also unwise. It is Parliament’s job to control the PM in his international negotiations. It does this, as with Mrs May, by ratifying or refusing to ratify the results of the talks. It does it if it wishes by endless debate and pressure during the course of the negotiations, often with unhelpful effects on them. If enough MPs in Parliament strongly disapprove of the PM’s negotiating stance then they need to remove him from office by voting him down in a motion of no confidence and triggering an election.
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