Supreme Court

Brighton Mod said:

What a dull watch, just how much has this cost Gina Millers husband? Is this to do with democracy, for those can afford it, or is it for personal gain by her hedge fund manager husband. Millions of pounds spent in four days for something that will be debated in parliament anyhow and article 50 will be invoked. Complete waste of time.

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Gwylan said:

It wasn't Miller or her husband who appealed to the Supreme Court - it was the government

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Gwylan said:

It wasn't Miller or her husband who appealed to the Supreme Court - it was the government

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Brighton Mod said:

What a dull watch, just how much has this cost Gina Millers husband? Is this to do with democracy, for those can afford it, or is it for personal gain by her hedge fund manager husband. Millions of pounds spent in four days for something that will be debated in parliament anyhow and article 50 will be invoked. Complete waste of time.

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BensGrandad said:

No it wasnt but it was her who pushed the out of touch judges to make a decision that wasnt needed as the people have spoken and I was a remain supporter, but dont agree with her motives.

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BensGrandad said:

No it wasnt but it was her who pushed the out of touch judges to make a decision that wasnt needed as the people have spoken and I was a remain supporter, but dont agree with her motives.

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Brighton Mod said:

What a dull watch, just how much has this cost Gina Millers husband? Is this to do with democracy, for those can afford it, or is it for personal gain by her hedge fund manager husband. Millions of pounds spent in four days for something that will be debated in parliament anyhow and article 50 will be invoked. Complete waste of time.

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No. I try to see the best in everyone and in their arguments. Sometimes I worry that I do it to a fault, cutting people slack when they don’t deserve it. But there are moments when resistance is the only option. And this is one of them. So, no. Absolutely not.

The suggestion that the courts must rule in favour of the government over Article 50, because to rule otherwise would stoke resentment among supporters of Brexit, is completely outrageous.

I think actually it is a case study in populism and what is wrong with it.

It is, to start with, a threat, a lightly veiled piece of blackmail. The blackmailers are offering acceptance of the ruling of judges only if they get the result they want. Otherwise we can expect “anger” and the never quite specified consequences of that anger. Such blackmail can never be accepted.

It is also a misrepresentation of what courts are for and what they are being asked to rule upon. Courts have to interpret the law, and the point of law the Supreme Court is interpreting is not whether we leave the European Union. It is whether the power of governments to agree treaties extends to their power over Article 50.

The suggestion that we mustn’t have due legal process because it might delay Brexit is also childish. Leaving the EU is complicated and has profound consequences and needs to be done properly and legally. It should be done expeditiously, of course, but it is absurd to start complaining that we voted in June and haven’t left yet.

However none of this begins to explain how dangerous the attack on the court judgment really is.

Parliament must accept and respect the result of the referendum and we must leave the EU. I also hope that the government wins its court case. I think the prerogative power to agree treaties is important and I fear the consequences of its dilution. In particular, as a free trader I worry about the power to agree trade deals.

To hope for such a result, or to argue that this would be the correct outcome legally, is, however, entirely different from suggesting that the result of the referendum sweeps all before it and that judges should lay aside their legal opinion in order to avoid the fury of Leave voters.

In a very insightful new book, What is Populism?, the Princeton academic Jan-Werner Müller looks at the political ideas that unite such disparate political figures as Donald Trump and Hugo Chávez, Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Geert Wilders, Beppe Grillo’s Five Star Movement and Nigel Farage’s Ukip.

The professor argues that the central claim each of them makes is that they embody the will of the people. That will is simple, clear and unified and obviously associated with the national interest.

The crucial first populist step is to ensure that “the people” are limited to those who share the same conception of the country’s destiny. Anyone who does not must be considered not a real person. They are a member of “the elite” or of “the establishment”, they are liberals or they are metropolitan. These groups don’t do “real” jobs, or have “real experience”; they conspire against “real” people. They “just don’t get it”.

Other groups may be excluded: immigrants, say, because they aren’t “real” nationals. The attempt to show that Barack Obama wasn’t really born in America was much more than just an effort to deny him the presidency on technical grounds.

Or half the country can be dismissed as “Remoaners”. Nigel Farage described the Brexit vote as a “victory for real people”. Quite similar to Trump’s extraordinary comment at a rally in May that “the only important thing is the unification of the people — because the other people don’t mean anything”. Through this process of exclusion, the populists produce a homogeneous people with a common interest.

The next stage in advancing populism is to attack anybody who challenges the exclusive right of the populist party to define or interpret the national interest. It is vital, for instance, to attack the mainstream media and use social media to communicate with people directly.

Parliament, of course, allows diverse representation and the clash of interests. Politicians interpret these different interests and attempt to weigh them and compromise between them. This is everything populists despise. A lot of talking and accommodation of different views when the will of “real” people is perfectly clear. So it is essential to populism that politicians — “the Westminster bubble” — be subjected to continuous attack. These people have never done a “real” day’s work in their lives. What do they know? And anyway, why should parliament debate anything when we already know what people think?

The populist Hungarian party Jobbik always couples “politician crime” with “gypsy crime”. The Ukip donor Arron Banks flits from attacking “so-called intellectuals” and the “metro elite” to suggesting that the Austrians didn’t get it right in their presidential election, rejecting the anti-immigrant far-right candidate because “they haven’t suffered enough rape and murder yet”.

The attack on the courts is therefore just one part of a bigger argument. Judges proceed by precedent and rules and make judgments that balance the rights of individuals against the decision of the majority. Yet this assumes that balance is required. Haven’t “real” people made themselves perfectly clear? If judges can’t see that, it is because they aren’t proper people themselves. They are the establishment, the elite, the metropolitans.

Müller’s analysis explains also why so many populist political positions are simple and pure. It’s just “common sense”. “People”, you see, are tired of political correctness. If the people are cohesive and share a common interest it is not hard to serve that interest. Politics is only difficult if the values and interests of different constituencies clash with each other.

But here is the point, the crucial, unavoidable point. The populist claim is wrong. Wrong and dangerous. All of us are “real” people living “real” lives. We all have interests and views and they clash. We must argue and compromise and no one has the “actual person” trump card.

Our institutions — parliament, government, the courts — must serve a plural society, they must balance interests and protect rights. We have decided to leave the EU. We must leave the EU. We will leave the EU. But if you think that in the process we are going to allow anyone to undermine a liberal, pluralist, political democracy based on the rule of law you’ve got another think coming. No.

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ManOfSussex said:

I posted this opinion piece in the refrendum thread from today's Times which in effect supports Brexit and the legal case and why:

We must stand up to the populist blackmail

Daniel Finkelstein

Veiled threats over judges’ Brexit ruling show why movements that claim to speak for ‘the people’ are so dangerous.

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Mellotron said:

The Government tried to break the law - they were stopped. Trying to find the issue...

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nicko31 said:

Thank god we have philanthropists like Gina Miller, she's Briton of the year in my book, pretty disgusting the vile abuse she has been forced to endure and prosecutions are now taking place.

Where you are a remainer or a leaver she stopped our government trying to use powers of a dictactorship. For the government, going to the Supreme Court is all about politics and not about process, and its the UK taxpayer footing the bill

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Brighton Mod said:

What a dull watch, just how much has this cost Gina Millers husband? Is this to do with democracy, for those can afford it,.

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Murray 17 said:

It's clearly the Remainers trying to put a spanner in the works and try to get concessions on Brexit. I know 'officially' it's about triggering Brexit, but it makes no difference who or how it's triggered. It's a disgrace and an affront to democracy.

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BensGrandad said:

No it wasnt but it was her who pushed the out of touch judges to make a decision that wasnt needed as the people have spoken and I was a remain supporter, but dont agree with her motives.

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Murray 17 said:

It's clearly the Remainers trying to put a spanner in the works and try to get concessions on Brexit. I know 'officially' it's about triggering Brexit, but it makes no difference who or how it's triggered. It's a disgrace and an affront to democracy.

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ROSM said:

Why are the judges out of touch?

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ROSM said:

You are confusing a referenda as being the only aspect of democracy. we live in a parliamentary democracy which means that parliament is sovereign (which is what the referendum was all about if you believe Boris Johnson)

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