Owl says: Tories don’t apologise!
“Boris Johnson suspended – or ‘prorogued’ – Parliament for five weeks earlier this month.
Supreme Court judges have now said the move, which stopped MPs carrying out duties in the run-up to Brexit on 31 October, was unlawful.
Speaking to the Herald, Councillor Wright said: “The term ‘constitutional crisis’ has been used so often in recent months, associated with the actions of the Conservative government that it has ceased to have much impact – until today.
“Amazingly, we have almost come to expect that Boris Johnson’s Tory government will offend the practice of fair play, will not observe democratic traditions, and will not even respect the rule of law.
“But the Supreme Court ruling this morning is of a different magnitude.
“In a disastrous decision for the government and personally for the Prime Minister, eleven judges ruled unanimously, that suspending parliament was ‘unlawful, void and of no effect’.
“They said he had not put forward a reason, let alone a good reason, to shut down parliament, and stop it doing its proper job.”
“Boris Johnson’s actions in seeking to prorogue parliament go way beyond his kicking 21 moderate Tory MPs out of the party, and turning it into an extreme right wing group.
“Johnson has also been found guilty of misleading the Queen. It’s a rather squalid state of affairs when our Queen gets dragged into supporting the actions of our unscrupulous Prime Minister.
“The defiant Boris Johnson must now apologise to the Queen unreservedly, apologise to parliament unreservedly, apologise to the electorate unreservedly, and resign.”
Mike Gordon, professor of constitutional law at the University of Liverpool, has argued that the court decision raises the issue of what powers the monarch should hold and the need for the introduction of a law on prorogation.
He told the PA news agency that the Queen had been placed in a ‘no-win’ situation when asked to act on Mr Johnson’s advice.
“She’s in a no-win position here because of the nature of our constitutional monarchy,” Prof Gordon said.
“Convention says she has to comply with what the Government requires of her, but now she’s been told by the Supreme Court that what they told you to do was unlawful.
“But it would have been very difficult for her to challenge that advice at the time, and if she had that would have brought her into very difficult political territory.”
He added: “These are powers that probably, if we want to maintain the image of a monarch who is impartial and above politics, then this is probably not a power that such a figure can possess.”
The court’s ruling stated that it was ‘not suggested in these appeals that Her Majesty was other than obliged by constitutional convention to accept that advice’.
It added: “In the circumstances, we express no view on that matter.”
It also declares that is not known what discussions went on between Mr Johnson and the Queen when the PM telephoned the monarch at Balmoral at 6pm on Tuesday August 27 to formally advise prorogation.
Buckingham Palace has not commented on the ruling.”
East Devon Watch 