‘Traitors of the people’. Headline from 1933 Germany. Featured are judges, politicians, etc. antithetical to Hitler.
A thought occurred to me this afternoon.
Imagine this case hadn’t been brought. No one raised the possibility that the use of royal prerogative was praeter legem.
So, in March Tessy Mayhem invokes Article 50, and the irreversible and irrevocable process of Brexit begins.
Then some concerned member of the public brings a case, and the verdict is the same as it was yesterday.
The Prime Minister is acting illegally, or at least in contravention of the law by using royal prerogative in this case.
Where would Britain be in these circumstances?
The clock is ticking. There is no way back.
The EU, asked if it can extend the time limit, raises its collective eyebrows and says…
What?
You didn’t know your own law?
You didn’t take advice from your highest legal authorities before doing this?
Nah. Come off it. You’re having us on.
We don’t believe you.
You couldn’t be that thick.
Could you?
MUNGUIN'S NEW REPUBLIC 
The lesson from history is that it can’t be harped on about enough so keep it up.
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Yes, I think you’re right, Dave. Thanks
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The only thing we learn from history is that we never learn from history.
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LOL
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Hi Tris. I really don’t know what emotion is getting the upper hand in me at the moment; despair at the arrant stupidity of huge swathes of the populace to allow themselves to be so suckered in by a large proportion of our elected politicians and the MSM; fear at the possibilities this could unleash in terms of a grotesquely intolerant society; or resignation – because it’s always been there, just bubbling below the surface.
Look; you stupid, stupid people – the UK is a mess because we have allowed our supposed lords and masters to make it so over many generations; it’s got bugger all to do with johnny foreigner. You’re skint because Lord and Lady so and so have been creaming the profits relentlessly for donkeys and if that means them also creaming all of society’s safety nets as well, then that too seems fair game these days. The only reason you think it’s the fault of Jocks, Micks, gays, Poles, Muslims etc, etc is coz you’ve relentlessly devoured the Daily Diana and it’s ilk for most of your life – and who owns the MSM you stupid git – why the same Lords and Ladies (or their best bosom buddies) who are contriving to keep you skint in the first place; and why do they blame all of the afore mentioned untermensch, well otherwise they might have tell the truth and that would cast a rather unfavorable light on all of troughers; i.e. themselves – and that’ll never happen. Jeez, I’m a peaceable kinda guy but sometimes the words ‘come the revolution’ have a certain appeal!! And that’s only the glorious UK – we’ve got the US election coming up in a few days and what’s your choice there – a slavering racist, misogynist buffoon who wouldn’t think twice about pressing the big red button, or someone who at best is a corporate toady, and at worst almost certainly a criminal. Interesting times indeed – and damned scary
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Couldn’t have put it better myself.
I might add that the papers are more or less all owned from abroad. How many of the proprietors actually live here?
Not the Mail, Times, Sun, Telegraph, Indy… I think the Guardioan is ownd by a Trust Fund.
That leaves the Daily Diana
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Guardian is not a trust became a PLC in 2008. I think I read that is now held by an Offshore Trust.
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That figures. For such an amazing world financial centre, we seem to have an awful lot of off-shore Trusts, eh Mr Cameron!
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isn’t the Daily Diana owned by Richard Desmond? His earlier titles included Penthouse, Asian Babes and other titles not available to the under 16s. There is a word starting with P to describe those – gosh what is it? Publications or is there another word?
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Ye, indeed. Dirty Des, as Private Eye calls him. Apparently he gets very hurt about that. He recently sold off most of his P business, though.
He’s very generous to charity, and to UKIP.
I think you are talking about publications from the top shelf, as opposed to the top drawer?
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With every passing day, the consequences of the No vote become more clear. We could have been free of this.
And whats with the GIANT map of Britain? Maybe Jacob and his pals could study it and realise there is life north of Watford. As for us, it lets us remember our place.
I wish I was Irish, or at least living in Eire at times like this.
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I certainly wish I had access to an irish passport in case I have to escape.
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Fear not Tris, we will have a Scots one presently.
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My application will be in the post on the day the address of the passport office is announced.
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As a distant observer, it does seem like a madness has taken root. I know I make a lot of jokes and indulgently over-egg the pudding for dramatic effect (in an obvious and ironic way, I hope) but something is really going on. Something scary. Properly scary. It has the hallmarks of something that has been growing and growing and has now reached a critical mass. Something to do with English nationalism and racism and xenophobia and a delight in willful ignorance.
The language of the Nazis has seeped into everyday discourse. Bildungsbürgertum is today’s liberal elite. Fremdvölker is the enemy of the people. Gemeinschaftsfremde could easily be modernised as citizens of nowhere. These terms are all gleamed from https://twitter.com/IsolatedBrit – I must stress this is not what they taught me at German class! How long before we have the modern equivalent of the “German business”? Amber Rudd was well on the way with her registry of firms employing non-UK workers.
You will never hear any of these terms in Germany. A sensitivity still surrounds provocative language there. Even an anodyne phrase like “to each his own” is a cultural taboo because “Jedem das Seine” was the entrance slogan to concentration camps. But Britain could never sink into fascism, right? The rule of law, the natural stability of parliamentary democracy, all of that keeps us safe from harm. I wonder if the single entity that kept the UK safe from its own idiocy was the EU. We’ve not even left yet.
I need to get off the internet and cheer myself up with some whisky and a blast of The Human League.
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To a certain extent, we are viewing this distantly too. I’m not saying that none of this is happening in Scotland, but it is far less apparent here. Of course there are far fewer of us.
All this overarching “Britishness” has always been there, but it may, to an extent, have been amplified by the Scottish independence referendum campaign, and the awakening of the UKOK, Better Together, and the late coming but much cleverer “No Thanks” campaign.
I’ve had a sneaky wee laugh at some of the dafter elements of it. Like the dough head MP that wants to force the BBC to play the national anthem at the end of BBC1 programmes. It was my impression, although I’m sure that it wasn’t so in every household, that by the time they had got through the opening lines, unless everyone had already fallen asleep, the set was already turned off. In the cinema, only a few souls were left standing while everyone else headed for the door. I suppose it doesn’t help that we have such a dirgy anthem, splitting the country into royalist and non royalists.
But this campaign, since the beginning of the EU referendum, against anyone who isn’t British (even in some cases English) and now against the law, is unprecedented. It’s vile and it makes my flesh creep.
The law is the law. Of course, it is interpretable, because the law is never quite clear, but isn’t it better to find out before, rather than after Article 50, that what we are doing may be against our own laws?
I trust you enjoyed your whisky. I hope it wasn’t the Swiss stuff!
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It was a delicious Arran single malt.
I’m relieved that this is at least mainly restricted to England and, I guess, Wales.
Entoure Snr told me that just after the war they played the national anthem at the cinema at the end of the last film of the night. Nobody stayed. I just can’t see Glaswegians going along with that. Also, there was an almighty rush to get to the chip shop before it shut.
The hatred of the Leave campaign did seem unprecedented. That’s why I switched off the TV and had a news embargo for about a month and a half. I just never envisaged we’d end up here.
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Yes, I’m told it was a stampede to get out. And those few people who stood and wouldn’t move were trampled on. There was the chipper and the last bus to catch.
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Whats going on is this…..
The criminal elite and their banker buddies have stolen all the loot they can get their hands on and left the populace with a crippling debt in the process. The system is going down and they know it.
Whats to do then….
What they always do
Start a war as a cover. Hence demonise Putin, Asad etc.., start the Great British everything campaign to work up support. Recruit cannon fodder from schools. Perform military exercises on Russias doorstep.
Wake up its the US, UK, Saudi, alqaeda, etc that are the bad guys.
Why are we supplying the Saudis with weapons to kill Yemeni people?
Who bombed Afgahistan, Iraq, Sudan, Somalii?
Who started discontent in Libya, Syria and Ukraine?
Remember Eastern Ukraine are ethnic Russians, Crimea is Russian.
The popularly elected Asad government invited Putin to help fight ISIS.
It doesn’t sit well with people when it’s pointed out that they are on the side of the bad guys so I expect a lot of flak.
WAKE UP. If WW3 starts you’re going to be Nuked and the US missile shield wont help it will be gone in thirty seconds.
Russia has already performed evacuation drills for 40million citizens going into underground shelters. Germany has warned its citizens to store food and water for 10days minimum.
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Contd;
Well its now out in the open Wikileaks just did this. See how it links in with Wastemonster and their cover ups of paedophlia
Share this with everyone you can.
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I just can’t watch this.
But we all know, these days, that more or less it’s the kind of terrible awful thing that goes on in places where people are powerful enough to be above the law.
They will go to any lengths to keep it quiet.
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I would have given this more credence if there hadn’t been an advert plugging Trump teeshirts in the middle of it.
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LOL.
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Its got bigger
http://www.silverdoctors.com/headlines/world-news/wikileaks-bombshell-reveals-clintons-supported-child-trafficker-laura-silsby-literally-pricing-how-much-it-costs-to-transport-children/#more-73848
This is going to lead to Jimmy Saville et al
Kaboom!
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You know, it would be much better if this election, which will affect all our lives, particularly here as the new president will be Tessy’s boss, were about the issues.
But really all we hear are stories about her emails and his fondness for, and dislike of, females of the opposite sex (as Herr Flick would say).
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Well, I’d agree that we are the bad guys. All this Brit nationalism, isn’t being stirred up for nothing. I hope you’re wrong about WW3 though. Munguin isn’t partial to the idea being nuked!!!
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As England suffocates under its own extremist confusion it’s getting clearer by the day what Scotland should do: end the union with England.
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There’s never been any doubt in my mind that marriage should be replaced by friendship.
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If the political establishment in London reject EU exit then things will get very nasty.
We can expect Kristallnacht and all the rest of the shenanigans that happened so many decades ago in Germany to be repeated by England’s right wing politicians and their press pack.
Cool heads are going to be required to prevent this from happening.
At present,during the phoney war phase,these newspapers can get away with their mob inciting rhetoric but when things get serious,they will have to rein in their editors or face the consequences.
No sane person wants to see violence and disorder on our streets.
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The trouble is that once you unleash this kind of thing, it’s very difficult to get it back in the box.
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Tris
The vilification of the judges is beyond a joke and a place where the press need to be very careful about, the silence from the Tories on the headlines also says it all.
The UK is descending into madness, what was an honest vote for many and for some a chance to give the establishment a kicking is resulting in a very dangerous right wing surge in England if the headlines are symptomatic of the general feeling and certainly some of the comments I have seen appear to lead in that direction.
Scotland can have no part in it. Now I don’t believe that Parliament will try to stop Brexit, there will be hell to pay in England if that happens, and that is the problem. England yet again is deciding for all of us and if that does not get the yoons to sit up and take notice then I actually do dread what is coming along next. The world is going mad and we are leading the race, we have May and the USA will have Clinton or Trump, Russia has Putin and Europe not that much better off. The unionists don’t have a clue what they are doing or are too busy working on how they can bring Corbyn down.
Madness.
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I think that they discovered that the way to appeal to a large number of brits was to play the racist card, which is a sad reflection on our society (and many others too…note America).
The ends justified the means.
The cheap tabloids know how to press the buttons.
Just, once you let this kind of thing gain traction, and “respectability”, how do you stop it?
It’s pretty uncertain where it will all lead.
i wodner how the Uk will cope. Well, the royals and the lords will do OK. The Big business men will do OK and well, sod the rest.
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Tris, you speculate about what might have happened if May had gone ahead with invoking Article 50 using the royal prerogative. Perhaps the EU, having taken its own legal advice about the legality of that, and bearing in mind that Article 50 says that it should be invoked in accordance with a country’s own constitutional arrangements, might have rejected the UK’s resignation letter as invalid. However, I suspect they would have preferred to overlook any such technicality on the basis that, if the UK wants to leave the EU, then the sooner the better.
As for the attacks on the judges by the likes of the Daily Heil, this can be seen as a blatant attempt to pressure the Supreme Court judges who will hear the appeal; any who uphold the original decision can expect to be vilified by the gutter press (which now includes papers which at one time were respectable broadsheets). This seems to me to be contempt of court, or something not far short of it. Of course, they are running no risk of being prosecuted, as in this case they are doing May’s dirty work for her.
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Oh I have no doubt that much of the EU will be happy to see the UK go. But I still say that it would ahve been possible that, even if the EU had turned a blind eye, or not felt qualified to try to sort out what is allowable under royal prerogative (much still is), it is possible that a UK citizen (possibly one with a law degree)might have brought the case AFTER the triggering… the irreversible triggering!
I wonder what the supreme court will do.
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“Any Member State may decide to withdraw from the Union in accordance with its own constitutional requirements.”
I’m not a lawyer but I take from that statement that the EU leaves the constitutional arrangements to the exiting nation. In this specific instance, it would be hard for the EU to argue that the UK hadn’t upheld its constitution because even the UK also has no firm idea how that might be achieved. I do agree that it is quite ambiguous in its wording and could be interpreted that a condition of leaving is acting in accordance with constitutional arrangements. Article 50 is quite vague, truth be told. Having said that, the EU typically doesn’t get involved in the legislation or constitution of member nations. EU directives, for example, are absorbed into legal frameworks as each nation sees fit.
Should we expect the EU to act like the bouncer at a nightclub by denying A50 to drunks and known troublemakers? I’d certainly like them to save us from ourselves. We need help!
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Yes, I’d say that too.
In some cases it would require a referendum. In some approval by one house of parliament, possibly by two.
Maybe some would have a referendum followed by a presidential decree. So it doesn’t mean that Royal Prerogative is not allowed by the EU.
The judgement, to my reading, says that in the case of the UK, the business of coming out requires approval of parliament.
Help? Yes, but I fear it’s too late for any of that.
BTW, did you see that Nicola has said that she warned Cameron he might lose the referendum, and he told her not to be silly.
Oh well, the worst prime minister since the war…
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There are a couple of articles which folks might care to read.
http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/brexit/2016/11/03/the-high-court-judgment-on-article-50-is-a-proper-drubbing-for-the-government/
http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/brexit/2016/11/04/some-reactions-to-the-article-50-judgment-in-the-high-court-are-frightening/
We are not the only ones who are concerned.
However what worries me even more is the way that the BBC “reports” some of this crap without commenting. By not questioning what the tabloids say the BBC lends them credibility. As far as I am concerned, they are culpable of gross negligence.
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Thanks bsj.
Surely we are not seeing the BBC being impartial???
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