What would it take to “block” Brexit?

Another court case I brought because nobody else did:

There has been renewed talk lately of “Parliament” (meaning the House of Commons) somehow “blocking” a so-called “no-deal Brexit”, the outcome for which Parliament (meaning both houses) has already legislated, unless the Commons, in a “meaningful vote”, approves a withdrawal agreement that is actually on offer, before the statutory “exit day” arrives.  Exit day has been 29th March 2019, either 12th April 2019 or 22nd May 2019, definitely 12th April 2019, and is now 31st October 2019.

The day I tried to save Brexit

Another exciting episode in my courtroom drama of a life

Mentle J

As reported here on Tuesday 9th April 2019, I suspected then that the Prime Minister might purport to revoke the UK’s article 50 notice to leave the EU before exit day, then defined as Friday 12th April 2019 at 23:00.  That is, if the Council didn’t give her an extension that night (which, in the event, the Council did).

I therefore attended the Royal Courts of Justice on Wednesday 10th April, clutching these papers.  I was seeking an emergency injunction to prevent the Prime Minister from canceling Brexit off her own bat.  There had been dangerous talk on the BBC news since the Sunday of that week (when I’d listened to Radio 4 online in Bucharest) that led me to fear that summary cancelation of Brexit on the Prime Minister’s part might be her back-up plan if denied her extension.

I have recently obtained a transcript of what was said in court that day.

Schrödinger’s Brexit

On new metaphorical applications of the Schrödinger’s Cat thought-experiment or joke and the need for a new legal test case, in the context of #Brexit

Until an observation forces the system into one of the two equally probable cat-life eigenstates, the box contains the linear superposition of half a dead cat, and half a live cat.

Before we get close again to a default, no-deal Brexit, perhaps next time with no extension on offer, it’d be nice to discover the British PM’s as-yet-undisclosed belief as to the correct answer to an unresolved constitutional question. That question is what the constitutional requirements are for revoking the Article 50 notice already given.

A key question within that is whether there would need to be a new Act of Parliament before the PM could revoke Article 50 notice. What does the PM think is the answer to that? It’s not at all clear from the news what she thinks.

# Let my people stay

Learning that the British Prime Minister was seeking the EU’s permission to delay Brexit further and threatening to cancel it altogether if she didn’t get her own way (about which I hope to see her in court), I thought I’d add some extra verses to the o-o-ol’ negro spiritual I’d mentioned in my 2004 Houston speech.

LET MY PEOPLE STAY

When Israel was in Egypt’s land
Let my people go
Oppressed so hard they could not stand
Let my people go

Go down Moses
Way down in Egypt land
Tell old Pharaoh
“Let my people go”

Thank God for the floods

I prayed for the floods that disrupted the Brexit referendum.  I tweeted after my prayer was answered.

The #Brexit vote could easily have gone the other way, but for some very unusual weather in Remain's heartland.https://t.co/3zCLDokXnE

— JohnAllman.UK (@John_Allman) June 24, 2016

I have a confession to make.  The night before the Brexit referendum, I prayed for divine intervention, suggesting one possible thing to the Lord (meaning the triune God of Christianity), in the context of a general prayer for Him to do something.  I suggested His causing freak weather on polling day, affecting areas of the country where intended Remain voters were in the majority.

# There’s a hole in my Brexit

Star post

#Catch50

The UK trying to leaving the EU may turn out to be like Captain Yossarian trying to leave the air force, in Catch-22.  I have written a song about this.

Here are the lyrics.

The UK still has important work to do inside the EU

I voted Leave in the Brexit referendum.  However, even as I voted Leave, I knew that I wanted the UK to remain in the EU temporarily after a victory for the Leave campaign.

I want the UK to remain in the UK until the work is done, in order to lead a campaign within the EU, for the reform of the procedure for a member state to leave the EU, to make it safe for the UK and any other member state to leave the EU.

The right to die -v- the right to life

The EU Directive published today on the right to die places the EU Commission on a direct collision course with the Council of Europe, which is still, in its European Convention on Human Rights, rather sold on the outdated notion of humans having a so-called “right to life” (Article 2).

The right to life is incorporated into UK law by the Human Rights Act 1998.  Because today’s Directive has direct applicability, the right to die established in today’s Directive is directly incorporated into UK law, with immediate effect, by the European Communities Act 1972.  This is an Act, which, as the late Master of the Rolls Lord Denning observed, Parliament may not have the freedom to repeal that it imagined it would have, when it passed the Act, even if UKIP gets elected to power.

As from today, therefore, without Parliament having to lift a legislative finger to implement the EU provision, the new British right to die now sits uncomfortably alongside the old British right to stay alive.