Hi David,
Absolutely! But even with a slim majority, I don't believe that this
policy could be pushed through Parliament. On current voting patterns,
May would have lost the Meaningful Vote vote by around 50 even if she
had 50 entirely biddable MPs at her disposal.
All the best,
James
On 13/03/2019 14:05, David Garcia wrote:
Hi James,
I agree with all your points except:
I'm of almost exactly the opposite view to you, in that I'd say that
this shit-storm has demonstrated that Parliament absolutely is sovereign.
The fact that the executive needs, deceptively, to propose cunningly
ambiguous forms of wording to non-binding votes, and needs to try to
game the Parliamentary system, rather than confidently overruling it
(as would a genuinely unrestrained autocracy) suggests that it still
acknowledges Parliament's power
The explanation for the necessity of the maneuvers you are describing
is not the strength of parliament but the fact that the goverment lost
its majority in the last election. Interestingly
even in this context it was still able to control the timetable and
the agenda right up until the yesterday’s vote. In fact even now we
are seeing the government STILL contemplating bringing
back the same failed deal for a third time in the hope that eventually
parliament will be terroised into surrender.
Best
David
Hi Keith
I think the article is interesting but misses out the central
challenge that the profound political/constitutional crisis has
thrown up which is: at what point and how
does a theoretically sovereign parliament take control when a
government has lost control of events but is unwilling to admit to
the fact.
If this shit storm has done one thing it has demonstrated that
parliamentary sovereignty is a myth. And the real power is with the
Prime Minister. It has
revealed the comparative impotence of parliament to do anythig but
block an oppose. The PM sets the time-table and the agenda as the
cliche goes
"govenment proposes, parliament disposes".
What we will see in the coming days is whether there is enough
wriggle room for some of the legal brains in the house (Letwin,
Cooper, Reeve, Starmer) to come
up with statutory instruments that would enable them to stop the car
going over the cliff by reversing the law which takes us out on the
29th (or at the end of the
extension period). This is hard as usually it is only the executive
(government) that gets to make new laws.
This experiment in actualising parliamentary sovereignty will not
only require legal expertise but also an ability to cooperate
accross the tribal divieds to forge a majority
for some course of action in parliament. This will have to begin
with a series of indicative (non-binding) votes to see what there
is a majority for. Maybe there is no majority
for anything.. or maybe parliament can get its act together and
build a workable process… withing 2 weeks!! Aaaaaaah
David
On 13 Mar 2019, at 10:55, Keith Hart <ke...@thememorybank.co.uk
<mailto:ke...@thememorybank.co.uk>> wrote:
On Mon, Mar 11, 2019 at 12:42 PM David Garcia
<d.gar...@new-tactical-research.co.uk
<mailto:d.gar...@new-tactical-research.co.uk>> wrote:
A true Democracy: All United in Ignorance-
Total fucking insanity
When asked by what is actually happening my reply has become “I
know nothing!”
There are a few people who have not abandoned thinking about
Brexit, even if the prospects are still gloomy. Take this lucid
contribution today from Patrick Maguire, political correspondent of
the New Statesman:
Good morning. MPs have voted down Theresa May's Brexit deal for the
second time - by a thumping margin of 149 votes. What happens now?
Westminster's favourite refrain is that nobody has a clue where
things will eventually end up, but we at least can say with some
confidence what will happen today: MPs will vote against leaving
the EU without a deal.
Or will they? As of 7am, we know now a bit more about how that
scenario would look in practice: a "smuggler's paradise" in
Northern Ireland, where the UK would unilaterally waive checks on
goods crossing the border, and what the CBI calls a "sledgehammer"
to the economy in the form of the temporary removal of tariffs on
87 per cent of imports.
But despite its attempt to put the screws on MPs, today's
government motion is a curious thing. If passed, it would both
confirm Parliament's opposition to a no-deal Brexit and note that
it remained the legal default on 29 March. That slightly confused
proposition reflects the feeling among many Tories that retaining
the ability to jump over the cliff is a vital negotiating tactic.
But with just 16 days to go, that isn't the unequivocal
rejection that Tory Remainers and opposition MPs want and we can
expect that coalition of the unwilling to approve an amendment from
Labour's Jack Dromey and Tory Caroline Spelman, ruling out no-deal
in /any /circumstances.
That, for some reason, has prompted a great deal of excitement and
gnashing of teeth. There is talk of the amendment taking no-deal
“completely off the table” and one Leave-supporting minister even
told /Newsnight/ that it meant Brexit was dead. It doesn't, and it
isn't, for the simple reason that even at this late stage, the
Commons is unwilling to incur the political pain of deciding what
it is for, rather than what it opposes. If it really wants to stop
no-deal two Fridays from now, it will have to actively vote for
something else: an Article 50 extension or a deal.
An unlikely alliance of hard Brexiteers, Conservative Remainers and
the DUP believe they have found the answer in an amendment seeking
approval for the latest iteration of the so-called Malthouse
Compromise. It proposes an extension of Article 50 to May 23rd -
the hard deadline before the European Parliament elections - and a
sweetener of cash and assurances on citizens' rights in exchange
for a two-year transition period. It all sounds terribly sensible
but for the fact the EU has never been willing to entertain it. But
even at this late stage it is gaining traction among Tory MPs,
which serves to illustrate the extent to which this Parliament is
only really willing to unite around two things: vague statements of
opposition and solutions that don't exist.
As the exasperation of the EU27 boils over, that isn't a great
signal to be sending to Brussels, which is making increasingly
clear that any Article 50 extension the Commons votes for on
Thursday will need to serve a constructive purpose - be it
hammering out some identifiable new deal, a new election or a
referendum - and not simply give MPs more time to disagree. The
EU's willingness to make today's vote against no-deal actually work
on terms that are acceptable to the UK, short of ratifying a deal,
can't be taken for granted. The worrying thing is that in
Westminster, it is. Brexit isn't dead, but it feels increasingly
like a negotiated one could be.
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