A Message To Parliament: ‘For God’s Sake, Go!’

By CONRAD BLACK, Special to the Sun | September 9, 2019

Americans watching the spectacle currently unfolding in the British government should not be fearful that the entire British political system is cracking up. It isn’t. The United Kingdom (of Great Britain and Northern Ireland) has been contemplating its national strategic direction since World War II.............Britain has often been of Europe but has never really been in it, and it has much more in common with the other largely Anglo-Saxon and English-speaking democracies than with the continental powers.

The current absurd state of affairs arose when prime minister David Cameron, in office between 2010 and 2016, promised a referendum on staying in Europe or leaving, certain that there could not be a vote to leave. But there was, 52% to 48%, in 2016.

Cameron had to resign and was replaced by Theresa May, who claimed to be leaving when she was really advocating an arrangement of remaining in Europe with some modifications..............Mr. Johnson has said he will try to negotiate a satisfactory arrangement with Brussels, but that he will leave without a compromise departure arrangement if he can’t reach an acceptable one, and that he will not seek another extension of the departure date, which was supposed to occur last March.............

I predict that the Johnson government will make an electoral arrangement with the Brexit party of Nigel Farage and will in a landslide victory against the fragmented opposition, a mélange of mountebanks, Marxists, and regional autonomists and separatists..........To Read More.....

Anti-Brexit Brit parliamentarians colluded with EU to sabotage PM Johnson’s no-deal Brexit

September 8, 2019 By Thomas Lifson

I am no expert on British public opinion, but it is hard for me to imagine that this news is going to help the anti-Johnson forces trying to stymie his plan to follow the dictate of the voters’ referendum and take the UK out of the EU according to their deadline. Via the left-wing Guardian:

Senior MPs opposing a no-deal Brexit sought assurances from the EU that their bid for a three-month delay would be granted, it has emerged.  

European leaders were sounded out before MPs, including the “rebel alliance”, passed a bill, which is expected to receive royal assent on Monday, forcing Boris Johnson to ask for an extension. However, those involved said there were no guarantees in a process that was changing by the day.  

It comes as the rebels, including former Tories who have been thrown out of the party, prepare for a legal battle in case the prime minister attempts to defy a law forcing him to ask for an extension on 19 October. The UK is due to leave the EU on 31 October, but the new law would envisage a Brexit extension until the end of January 2020.

That law was supposed to be the knockout blow for Johnson’s effort to follow the voters’ will. But as Mark Hanna notes today on these pages, the bill passed by Parliament is not yet law, and might not ever become a law:.......To Read More....

Brexit: What Would Odysseus Do?

By STEPHEN MacLEAN, Special to the Sun | September 5, 2019

Prime Minister Boris Johnson, a Classical scholar while a student at Oxford, may be thinking of Odysseus and his men who, homeward bound after their exploits at Troy, must navigate their ship between the twin dangers of Scylla and Charybdis — a six-headed sea monster and whirlpool, respectively — that threaten their destruction.

Even more gruesomely, Mr. Johnson, at the helm of the ship of state, must extricate his ministry from a constitutional dilemma, on Britain’s course for independence from the European Union.

Mere weeks before the UK is legislated to leave the EU, Brexit opponents have devised a Greek tragedy to stymie the Government. Remainers passed a motion allowing them to take over the “order paper,” effectively giving them control of parliamentary business. Their objective? To bring a bill before the Prime Minister, forbidding Britain to leave the EU on WTO terms, if he is unable to negotiate a successful trade deal before the October deadline.

Such is only the official rationale to stop “No Deal,” though. Don’t be fooled. The ultimate goal is to keep Britain ensnared in Brussels’ grip, through a withdrawal agreement that keeps it bound to regulatory and judicial fiat. Better yet, to annul Article 50 altogether and keep the UK within the EU, voiding the 2016 referendum to exit..........To Read More....

Brexit: Boris Turns to the Queen

Editorial of The New York Sun | August 28, 2019

Queen Elizabeth II’s approval of the suspension of Parliament next month is an important step in protecting Britain’s decision to leave Europe. It is crucial to a plan of Prime Minister Johnson that is being set down by furious opponents as, in the words of one, “profoundly undemocratic.” What a hypocritical jibe. For Mr. Johnson seeks to redeem a Brexit referendum that is one of the great acts of direct democracy in modern history.

The request to prorogue Parliament was set in motion Wednesday, the British state broadcasting agency reports. Mr. Johnson sent three members of the Privy Council — among them the Leader of the House, Jacob Rees-Mogg, and the Chief Whip, Mark Spencer — racing by flying machine to the Queen’s castle at Balmoral, where they delivered Mr. Johnson’s letter.

Elizabeth II’s power to prorogue Parliament is astonishing to us Yanks, in that it is sharply greater than that of our own head of state. Adjournment is the one vote a Congress can make that doesn’t require the president’s signature. A president may, on extraordinary occasions, convene a Congress, but the only time he can force an adjournment is when the two houses can’t agree when to adjourn........To Read More....