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Except I was not asking for it, simply making an observation. If the MPs actually wanted to be successful in thwarting it, they should have blocked the sending

Except I was not asking for it, simply making an observation. If the MPs actually wanted to be successful in thwarting it, they should have blocked the sending of the Article 50 notification. i.e. either placed conditions on the notification Act, or denied it passing. My view is that they were too craven (or stupid) at the time to show their true convictions. Anyway, the faffing about was a different Parliament, the withdrawal was sent 29th March 2017, then we had a GE and May lost her majority. I'd not view any of those "rogue parliament" events as a constitutional crisis, they're representatives, not delegates. As has been pointed out before, we have no legitimate expectations from anything an MP says to be elected. Our only recourse is to subsequently vote them out. A constitutional crisis would only really have happened if the Scottish MPs (possibly with MSPs) had acted to thwart things - i.e. end the Union; but the then SNP folks were (and still are) too happy in their gravy. As to an earlier 2019 GE, with the FTPA they were not obliged to do so. Yes their faffing about was annoying, and I take the view that folks were just sick of them dithering, hence the 2019 GE result. However, one should not really speak of the UK being a democracy. We (well strictly England, as the Scottish rules are generally ignored) are an absolute monarchy where parliament has wrested away most of the power, and handed it to the cabinet, which really means the PM. (The Scottish monarchy was never absolute.) As has been observed in the past, the UK is essentially an elected dictatorship, which depends upon those in power being "good guys". Recent events have shown how fragile that is, yet still it has not been (and probably will not be) reformed.

mike_hearn 3y ago
> Yes their faffing about was annoying, and I take the view that folks were just sick of them dithering, hence the 2019 GE result. What happened was extraordinary and had not been seen before. Calling it mere "faffing around" suggests you either don't remember those events fully, or perhaps, wished the conspirators had succeeded. Again - all the MPs who engaged in that so-called faffing around were evicted from their seats at the next election and there were IIRC more than 50 of them. The Lib Dems were the ringleaders, and voters reduced them to a rump. In particular their leader was booted from Parliament. The citizens showed exactly what they thought of this "faffing around" and it wasn't pretty for those who did it. > the UK is essentially an elected dictatorship That's a contradiction, isn't it? If you really want to lawyer things, the UK isn't essentially anything at all. There is not really a written constitution, the country just makes it up as it goes along. That means the constitution is whatever people think it should be. And pretty clearly, from the brutal destruction the Lib Dems caught in the last GE, the people think that MPs should meet basic standards like not baldly lying about their intentions, not attempting to overthrow their own government, not switching to parties with polar opposite key policies and not refusing to hold elections. Any system of government is defined by what people expect to happen, what people actually do, and ultimately what the army does. A democracy lives only as long as whoever wins doesn't immediately take over the secret police and execute all their opponents. If a UK political party were to try and do that, it would be right and proper for people to be outraged and enact extreme severe repercussions on those who were doing it. The fact that technically tradition says Parliament could vote for such thing really just doesn't matter at all, and British history is full of de facto changes to the role and powers of Parliament. Indeed, EU membership was exactly that. Lawyers will tell you that under the "unwritten constitution" Parliament may not bind itself, i.e. one party can't pass a law that forbids the next party from passing a different law. Yet EU membership did exactly that for decades.
- dfawcus 3y ago
  The UK can not have a written constitution; simply because that of England is incompatible with that of Scotland. In Scotland, the people are sovereign, can (and have) sacked their monarch. In England, the monarch was sovereign, now it is "the crown in Parliament" which is sovereign after parliament executed a king, and took the power. Those two positions can not be accommodated, so they're forgotten about, and the establishment acts as if the constitution is that of England - i.e. Scotland wass annexed.

mike_hearn 3y ago

> Yes their faffing about was annoying, and I take the view that folks were just sick of them dithering, hence the 2019 GE result. What happened was extraordinary and had not been seen before. Calling it mere "faffing around" suggests you either don't remember those events fully, or perhaps, wished the conspirators had succeeded. Again - all the MPs who engaged in that so-called faffing around were evicted from their seats at the next election and there were IIRC more than 50 of them. The Lib Dems were the ringleaders, and voters reduced them to a rump. In particular their leader was booted from Parliament. The citizens showed exactly what they thought of this "faffing around" and it wasn't pretty for those who did it. > the UK is essentially an elected dictatorship That's a contradiction, isn't it? If you really want to lawyer things, the UK isn't essentially anything at all. There is not really a written constitution, the country just makes it up as it goes along. That means the constitution is whatever people think it should be. And pretty clearly, from the brutal destruction the Lib Dems caught in the last GE, the people think that MPs should meet basic standards like not baldly lying about their intentions, not attempting to overthrow their own government, not switching to parties with polar opposite key policies and not refusing to hold elections. Any system of government is defined by what people expect to happen, what people actually do, and ultimately what the army does. A democracy lives only as long as whoever wins doesn't immediately take over the secret police and execute all their opponents. If a UK political party were to try and do that, it would be right and proper for people to be outraged and enact extreme severe repercussions on those who were doing it. The fact that technically tradition says Parliament could vote for such thing really just doesn't matter at all, and British history is full of de facto changes to the role and powers of Parliament. Indeed, EU membership was exactly that. Lawyers will tell you that under the "unwritten constitution" Parliament may not bind itself, i.e. one party can't pass a law that forbids the next party from passing a different law. Yet EU membership did exactly that for decades.

dfawcus 3y ago
The UK can not have a written constitution; simply because that of England is incompatible with that of Scotland. In Scotland, the people are sovereign, can (and have) sacked their monarch. In England, the monarch was sovereign, now it is "the crown in Parliament" which is sovereign after parliament executed a king, and took the power. Those two positions can not be accommodated, so they're forgotten about, and the establishment acts as if the constitution is that of England - i.e. Scotland wass annexed.