In 1997 the question was not brought before the court, so referencing it as some sort of precedent that his behavior should be acceptable is meaningless.
Secondly, the damage done was accordingly limited: If people saw the delay as questionable, people were given an opportunity to directly punish the government in an election rather than doing so indirectly via Parliament. If there was time to hold a general election with suitable margin ahead of October 31st, then this proroguing would not have been an issue, as we'd be going into an election instead.
> Again, Johnson is not denying Parliament the opportunity to vote on the deal.
It is not up to Johnson or the courts to decide what Parliament may or may not consider critical to do in the run-up to such a major constitutional change. His government serves with the consent of parliament; parliament is sovereign, not the government.
> It is important to really think through the logic here: if Johnson wanted to stop Parliament he would delayed until AFTER October 31. He didn't do this.
This does not follow. If he had announced he would prorogue until after October 31, then he would have to give up any pretense that he is negotiating a deal, because parliament would be unable to vote for it. It would instantly ensure a majority for removing him, as everyone opposed to no deal would have no other choice. His only option if his goal was to stop Parliament was to limit their ability to function as much as possible but still little enough to not push people into deciding removing him instantly was absolutely essential.
Happened in 1997. And the point is not the length of the prorogation (as the Supreme Court decision makes clear) but the justification.
In 1997, the justification was to stop a politically damaging report being published before an election.
Again, Johnson is not denying Parliament the opportunity to vote on the deal. Nothing will happen now that Parliament is sitting again. The negotiation will still happen at the European Council meeting at the end of the month, and Parliament will still get a vote on it.
It is important to really think through the logic here: if Johnson wanted to stop Parliament he would delayed until AFTER October 31. He didn't do this.
Not only was that 1997 incident during a time and issue that was not nearly as critical to the existence of the country, it was not at all comparable because it did not fundamentally prevent parliament from taking meaningful action on the issue: when parliament reconvened it could take up the issue again at it's leisure. In this case, prorogueing parliament had the effect of preventing nearly any meaningful action from taking place before it was too late. It's the difference between delaying action and denying it out right. (Yes there would have been a couple of days, not nearly enough for meaningful review or careful legislative action.)
Also length is a strong distinguishing factor. A few days or even a week or two are different enough in this situation to elevate a difference of degree to a difference in kind.
Finally, it happened with a PM that had a majority. Arguably the PM is not overuling the purpose of parliament when parliament itself agrees with the action. That is not the case here, there is no majority for the PM, and to all available evidence there is a majority that oppose this move by Johnson.
The timing is normal (for the conference season and Queen's speech). The duration was longer than normal, and of course we're in the middle of a crisis with a ticking clock. A two-week prorogation might have worked fine. But the intent
> what exactly is the PM supposed to (or not supposed) to do?
Normally this kind of conflict doesn't arise, because the government has a large majority, and if they cease to have a majority then the PM is replaced by a no-confidence vote.
Normally the PM is supposed to Be A Good Chap and Do The Decent Thing, which are ill-defined concepts from British honour culture, but have basically gone out the window with Johnson's behaviour.
Not a few of Major's cabinet ended up in jail, for various reasons.
In fact there's a better precedent - Attlee's prorogation in 1948.
The difference is that both were done by a PM with a working majority, so it could be argued they were done with the consent of Parliament.
Johnson nuked his own majority from orbit, so there's absolutely no argument that he's acting with the confidence and approval of Parliament.
Which is part of the problem. Parliament will remove him with a No Confidence vote soon. But first it wants to make sure that he doesn't make any other attempt to game electoral or Parliamentary procedure to force through the mad Brexit agenda that his hedge-fund owning backers want to profit from.
It won't burden the system. This has happened before in recent memory and is totally fitting with the powers of the Executive (the only difference here is the subject).
And it is worth saying: to get that verdict, they had to take the leap of judgement in assuming they knew exactly why the PM did it. The key assumption in that is there is an alternative before the October 31, there isn't...so it doesn't matter if Parliament is sitting or not because there is nothing to scrutinise.
To explain: Johnson was not denying Parliament a voice at all because he wasn't suspending past October 31. He was suspending until a few days before the European Council meeting, where the final deal will be negotiated, and then Parliament would vote on it. 95% of articles on this topic do not make this clear. The timetable does not change whether or not Parliament is sitting. It only changes if you are someone deluded enough to believe that there is an alternative...there isn't (the EU has said this multiple times).
What is burdening the system is:
* UK voted to leave
* General election was called which Brexit parties won (somehow given May's ineffectiveness)
* MPs voted to leave
* MPs voted down the current deal 4 times but EU won't change that deal
* MPs refuse to re-negotiate the deal or do anything that makes a deal possible
* The "alternative" from Labour is to go to the EU, negotiate exactly the same deal that has been voted down 4 times then they will whip their MPs against that deal too.
It is utterly bizarre to take aim at the only person who actually has a definite idea about how to solve this situation (regardless of whether you agree with it or not).
I'm not sure that demonstrating that Major used prorogation to avoid scrutiny of a scandal really changes much. So we're agreed that PMs prorogue Parliament for abnormally long periods when they want to avoid awkward questions? Why might Johnson be doing that now? Why risk all of these negative headlines to avoid just four sitting days?
Of course, it's also absurd that Parliament has carried on with its usual summer and conference recesses as if nothing important is happening.
There was no reason to come up with an argument for how this would stop scrutiny of Brexit, as the only arbiter of what matters to parliament is parliament. Further this argument rings hollow when Boris has demonstrated an extraordinary willingness to try to sidestep the wishes of parliament in this respect, and so Parliament has every reason to want to be able to react quickly to any further attempts from the government to act in ways it has no support for.
As such, when a group of parliamentarians are among those who have sued arguing their ability to do their job is frustrated, then parliament is frustrated.
The recess issue is relatively irrelevant given that we're already in uncharted waters, with Parliament having sat unusually long due to Brexit. It's already established that the timeline relating to Brexit means other conventions are being sidelined because of the importance of getting this sorted. Since Boris didn't wait for votes over recess to happen, he can not say that there would not have been adjustments made. E.g. even if Parliament as a whole were not to sit, there'd have been nothing stopping Parliament from continuing certain committee work, for example.
Not really. The Queen intervenes if she does prorogue as that is exercise of her reserved powers.
AIUI since Cromwell's reign ended the monarchy have agreed to give _parliament_ sovereignty.
If the monarch does not intervene, then parliament can stop Johnson from becoming de facto dictator.
If the monarch ends the established constitution, steps in and uses her executive power to order prorogation of parliament, then Johnson can have his way.
The Tories appear to have got in early, and lied, pretending that Johnson PM's right is to take away parliamentary sovereignty whilst the opposite is the case.
In case you don't know what was illegal (actually unlawful) here, it was the fact that he had a hidden agenda (to stifle debate).
Proroguing parliament is not unlawful, but using it as a tool to stop parliament exerting it's right - and then pretending it is for a different reason, is unlawful (the Supreme Court has decided)
EDITED- removed: "that his reasoning by which he asked the Queen to close parliament was not truthful or honest" as this is not correct. The only unlawful bit was that he wanted to stifle debate: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-49810261 - "The decision to advise Her Majesty to prorogue Parliament was unlawful because it had the effect of frustrating or preventing the ability of Parliament to carry out its constitutional functions without reasonable justification."
This actaully happened last year. The then Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, was in a spot of political bother and it looked like the then Queen was going to sack him, as she must (according to the conventions that comprise the UK's constitution) dismiss any prime minister who cannot command the confidence of the House of Commons.
Johnson didn't want to go, so he announced (via a leak to a tame newspaper, another part of our unwritten constitution) that he would advise the Queen to dissolve parliament, in order that new elections be held. He hoped to bring rebellious Tory MPs in line by threatening those in marginal seats with defeat, and those in secure seats with the prospect of a lengthy spell in opposition.
The Palace put paid to this plan by informing the PM that the Queen would be unavailable to meet with him, in the event of him perhaps wanting to to her in order to dissolve parliament.
If this had happened in a second or third world country, we would have called it a coup. A government suspending parliament is suspending the checks and balances. It is usurping all powers. As all other usurpers, Johnson cites the will of the people.
Yes, for now it is just temporary. In 49, Caesar also started with a temporary dictatorship: 11 days. Then in 48 one year. Then in 47 10 years. Then in 44 for life. then he was killed but the Roman republic and its sort of democracy died with him.
Johnson is blocking elected members of parliament from asserting their influence on the most important decisions since WWII.
Yeah, though somehow the British press managed to omit that little fact from their regurgitations of John Major's claims about how dangerous and remarkable this action was. His prorogation seems much more clear-cut an example of frustrating Parliamentary scrutiny too; he completely blocked Parliament from sitting between the time he announced it and the election he was hoping to protect, unlike this case where Boris left windows for them to act both before and after the prorogation, and he didn't even have the justification that Boris did of doing it to end an over-long session and hold a Queen's Speech.
The article says the last times this was done, parliament was suspended for 5 and 13 days respectively while Mr Johnson is asking for 23 days this time. That’s telling.
This bullshit is called prorogation. According to Wikipedia [0], there are a number of countries that have provisions for the prorogation of Parliament. They do not have to be monarchies. In absence of the queen, it could have been Boris himself who suspended the Parliament if the republic gave its prime minister (or president) such power.
The PM that no longer had the confidence of parliament a month after the election of his minority party.
It's reasonable for the PM to ask for such a self-serving thing, it's not for that ask to have been acquiesced to.
There were three options (that I can think of) for dealing with that situation:
1. Allow the coalition to form government.
2. Hold another election, a month after the previous one.
3. ...Suspend parliament for a few months, so that the coalition can't hold a vote to push the minority government out!
#2 is pretty nuts, but kind of justifiable, but #3 was absolutely nuts. (And had the bonus points of threatening that a non-confidence election half-a-year after the previous one is 'okay', despite Parliament being entirely non-functional for most of that intervening time.)
That there aren't clear rules about this, or that a minority PM can prevent a majority coalition from ousting him is the maddening part.
This is a case where the UK is governed by norms, rather than laws. Charles I prorogued Parliament for 11 years. Of course when he reconvened Parliament they refused to be dismissed again and ultimately deposed him.
It's hard to believe that a one-year suspension in modern times would stand, but resolving it would be messy.
The alternative would be having a head of state that, in many countries, is also not directly elected and has the power to dissolve parliament. If you want to argue from principles that the latter is better, fine, but it would have done nothing to avert what Johnson did; indeed, as a political figure, a president in her role would have had additional pressure to dissolve parliament.
Prorogations are routine. Prorogations to suspend Parliament to stop it doing things inconvenient to the executive really aren't. As with so many things with Brexit, it puts us beyond the conventions of Parliamentary government.
I agree that it's not a Reichstag fire situation. For American readers the closest analogy is probably with FDR's court packing plan: within the law, but an attempt to end-run another branch of government and take its power away.
Nevertheless, opponents (including within his own party) saw that as corrosive to good government and stopped it. I think they were right to do so. The line between that (and the Johnson situation) and the 'soft authoritarian' democracies with executive-dominated institutions is not all that wide.
The High Court ruled it non-justiciable as inherently political (a similar approach to the 'political question' doctrine in US federal courts).
The question the Supreme Court grappled with was whether the actual act of prorogation was a "proceeding in Parliament" or not. If it was, then the court can't overturn its effect despite the illegality they found in the earlier parts of the process (advice and Order-in-Council) as proceedings in Parliament are exempt from judicial scrutiny by the Act of Settlement 1688. They ruled that it wasn't (despite happening in Parliament) as prorogation is inherently an executive imposition from outside and therefore not a Parliamentary proceeding. Consequently they could rule the prorogation "void and of no effect" rather than merely making a declaration of unlawfulness or instructing the PM to have Parliament recalled.
Secondly, the damage done was accordingly limited: If people saw the delay as questionable, people were given an opportunity to directly punish the government in an election rather than doing so indirectly via Parliament. If there was time to hold a general election with suitable margin ahead of October 31st, then this proroguing would not have been an issue, as we'd be going into an election instead.
> Again, Johnson is not denying Parliament the opportunity to vote on the deal.
It is not up to Johnson or the courts to decide what Parliament may or may not consider critical to do in the run-up to such a major constitutional change. His government serves with the consent of parliament; parliament is sovereign, not the government.
> It is important to really think through the logic here: if Johnson wanted to stop Parliament he would delayed until AFTER October 31. He didn't do this.
This does not follow. If he had announced he would prorogue until after October 31, then he would have to give up any pretense that he is negotiating a deal, because parliament would be unable to vote for it. It would instantly ensure a majority for removing him, as everyone opposed to no deal would have no other choice. His only option if his goal was to stop Parliament was to limit their ability to function as much as possible but still little enough to not push people into deciding removing him instantly was absolutely essential.
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