Johnson's government received quite a shock yesterday when the Scottish Court of Session found his advice to The Queen about the prorogation of parliament was unlawful "and therefore prorogation itself was unlawful". It was a pleasant surprise for us of course and there were calls for parliament to be recalled immediately. However, the government's legal team is to appeal to The Supreme Court where a three day hearing will begin on Tuesday. I expect Johnson will win - unfortunately.
The Article 50 proceedings in 2016 were televised so we should get to hear the arguments on both sides which might embarrass Johnson if nothing else - assuming he's capable of being embarrassed. Our courts are always very reluctant to be drawn into political matters and I think getting the Supreme court to rule against the government on this will be extraordinarily difficult.
What it does tell us is that we have a government prepared to sail very close to (and possibly beyond) illegality in order to deliver devastating consequences for the nation set out in the Operation Yellowhammer documents which the government released late yesterday. This in itself should be shocking but it isn't. In the event, there were few surprises in what came out mainly because the juiciest bits had been leaked previously.
Accompanying the 6-page summary (I say 6-pages although one of the pages is blank for some strange reason) are letters from Michael Gove to Dominic Grieve, who moved the amendment to get the details and Hilary Benn, chair of the EU Exit Select Committee.
The letter to Benn (HERE) says:
"We are currently updating the assumptions for Operation Yellowhammer but in light of the motion brought forward by the Rt Hon Dominic Grieve MP that was passed in the House of Commons on Monday night, I thought it would be helpful to publish the Operation Yellowhammer document based on assumptions drawn up under the last Government."
Thus the watered down version will be out soon. The gloomy forecasts in Yellowhammer being replaced by a sunlit, rosy scenario showing how the Gove-Johnson duo would like leavers to believe it will be. Think of those television ads that switch from sad eyed people pictured in black and white to happy smiling ones in full technicolour, a sort of modern version of the Soviet posters seen in the Kruschev era.
The new government is clearly going to make a lot of very different assumptions to the last one and have shown which direction these are likely to be in - as if we didn't know.
Rosamund Urwin, Senior reporter at The Sunday Times, and currently focusing on Brexit, tweeted:
What's different about the new Yellowhammer document that the government has just published compared with the one I got hold of last month? The heading.— Rosamund Urwin (@RosamundUrwin) September 11, 2019
What did the version I had say? BASE SCENARIO
Now what does the new one say? HMG Reasonable Worst Case Planning Assumptions
So the original version has immediately been softened significantly with a simple change of title! Get ready for a complete turn round where none of the food, fuel and medicine shortages are ever mentioned again. Paragraph 15 is redacted but Ms Urwin tells us what it says:
"15. Facing EU tariffs makes petrol exports to the EU uncompetitive. Industry had plans to mitigate the impact on refinery margins and profitability but UK Government policy to set petrol import tariffs at 0% inadvertently undermines these plans. This leads to significant financial losses and announcement of two refinery closures (and transition to import terminals) and direct job losses (about 2000).Resulting strike action at refineries would lead to disruptions to fuel availability for 1-2 weeks in the regions directly supplied by the refineries."
This was too shocking for us to see for the second time apparently. One is bound to conclude the government have decided there was very little downside in arguing over the yellowhammer documents since the most alarming parts were already in the public domain through the earlier leak. What it does point to is unprecedented disruption to life in almost every sector of the economy of the kind nobody has seen since WWII.
Grieve's letter (HERE) is far more legalistic and goes into a lengthy explanation why they do not intend to release the internal emails about prorogation that the former Attorney General was seeking. They are obviously deeply damaging to Johnson and Cummings.
"As the Ministerial Code makes clear, Ministers have a duty to account to Parliament for their decisions, policies and actions of their department. In asking for this information the Humble Address appears to seek information as to the formation of that advice and the views and opinions of named individuals in respect of the advice. This is an unprecedented, inappropriate, and disproportionate use of this procedure. To name individuals without any regard for their rights or the consequences of doing so goes far beyond any reasonable right of Parliament under this procedure. These individuals have no right of reply, and the procedure used fails to afford them any of the protections that would properly be in place. It offends against basic principles of fairness and the Civil Service duty of care towards its employees."
The individuals (Cummings mainly) that Gove is so keen to protect wield enormous power over us including the ability to convince the PM to prorogue parliament for five weeks - and presumably as long as he likes, there being no legal limit on the time the legislature is suspended. Their 'rights' trump the proper working of our representative democracy according to Gove.
It will be interesting to see what The Supreme Court makes of it when the hearing starts next week. Let's hope they demand the emails are produced in court.
"As the Ministerial Code makes clear, Ministers have a duty to account to Parliament for their decisions, policies and actions of their department. In asking for this information the Humble Address appears to seek information as to the formation of that advice and the views and opinions of named individuals in respect of the advice. This is an unprecedented, inappropriate, and disproportionate use of this procedure. To name individuals without any regard for their rights or the consequences of doing so goes far beyond any reasonable right of Parliament under this procedure. These individuals have no right of reply, and the procedure used fails to afford them any of the protections that would properly be in place. It offends against basic principles of fairness and the Civil Service duty of care towards its employees."
The individuals (Cummings mainly) that Gove is so keen to protect wield enormous power over us including the ability to convince the PM to prorogue parliament for five weeks - and presumably as long as he likes, there being no legal limit on the time the legislature is suspended. Their 'rights' trump the proper working of our representative democracy according to Gove.
It will be interesting to see what The Supreme Court makes of it when the hearing starts next week. Let's hope they demand the emails are produced in court.
