A few comments on this pretty awful @briefing4brexit publication. Apparently sent to all MPs, bless them.
First, Richard Tombs claims this
He expressly accepts (earlier in the piece) that he is not speaking as a constitutional lawyer. Which is just as well because his statement about what the “right” and “duty” of the courts and executive are is a constitutional nonsense.
Parliament is sovereign, and what it passes is law. The executive has to obey the law. It is also accountable to Parliament, and has to accept Parliamentary scrutiny. It has no right/duty to circumvent or avoid those duties in the name of preventing Parliamentary “obstruction”.
As for the courts, their task is to uphold the law including fundamental constitutional principles. Not to prevent Parliamentary “obstruction”.
Next: Richard Tuck on the political weight of the referendum.
He seeks to argue that you can’t “read into” a vote what people “really” voted for.
But two fatal flaws in that. First, the argument also applies (if it is a good one) to May’s deal. That is Brexit. But Tuck and @tfbrexit and @DrLeeJones claim that May’s deal doesn’t honour the referendum, claiming that it isn’t a Brexit people voted for. Sauce for the goose...
Second, note a critical and fatal slip: “arguably a party manifesto”.
Tuck realises half way through that sentence that the claim that anone who votes for party X must be taken to be a vote for everything that party X does in power is absurd. We’re all Labour’s votes in 2001 votes for the Iraq war?
So he grudgingly accepts that you have to read the manifesto. Voters can be taken to have supported that.
But turn to the referendum. As I and others have pointed out as nauseam, Vote Leave consistently and strongly ridiculed the possibility that a Leave vote could mean a Belarus, crash out Brexit. See Gove.
So Tuck’s claim that you can or should read the referendum as support for crash out is nonsense. It also ignores the much greater than 50% of votes and seats obtained in the Euro elections by parties ruling out crash out.
Finally this on prorogation.
This is incorrect. The role of political motivation in public law is complex. See . But it is simply wrong to say that “motive does not matter”.
But if a decision is taken for reasons that the decision maker could not properly take into account, bearing in n mind the nature and purpose of the power being exercised, then motives matter very much.
I haven’t time to read the remaining pieces. But if they are as misconceived as the others, then I wouldn’t bother if I were you.
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