That’s brilliant!
ETA: Thanks for the backup, tomndebb!
Only the first two options are plausible. Boris has 99 problems, but a ditch ain’t one.
He’d be waiting for it to be dug by the bulldozer he promised to lie down in front of to stop the Heathrow expansion.
What a week it’s been. I’m more confident and optimistic now than I was at the end of August.
I hope you dropped your keyboard and left the room after you were finished typing that. 
Well done!
How about because the people in favour of Brexit are:
- Donald Trump :smack:
- Nigel Farage :eek:
- President Putin
- Dominic Cummings :rolleyes: (and his patsy, Boris)
There are a lot of good reasons for this, actually!
- On representational grounds. Sometimes, the outcome of a referendum is so horrendous that the representatives of a representational democracy must step in and put a stop to it. We now know that Brexit would be a short-term and long-term catastrophe, and the actual vote was merely advisory, with no clear promise of what would happen as a result of it. It is entirely valid to say, “No, sorry, we’re not going to shoot ourselves in the head, this is stupid.”
- On democratic grounds. Recent polling has shown a steady drop in support for Brexit, to the point where it is now clearly in the minority.
- On legitimacy grounds. The election was rife with dishonesty and outright (punishable!) electoral fraud, almost all on the winning side.
- On technical grounds. What people voted for and what people are likely to get are two very different things. There was an advisory vote held on the question, “Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?”. This says nothing about what manner the leaving should be, and it’s entirely possible that, had the actual available options been “stay or leave in a catastrophic no-deal brexit that leads to serious shortages in every industry and insane harm for countless people”, the poll would have gone quite differently.
- On the grounds that you’re not actually cancelling shit! There is no reason you could not revoke article 50 now, then re-invoke it a few years down the line once the UK has figured out what it wants and how it plans to achieve those goals. Literally all it does is give the status quo more time and improve Britain’s bargaining position.
So yeah. Lots of reasons.
Obviously not. But it does mean that we avoid the immediate catastrophe, and that seems slightly more pressing than pissing off a bunch of (and let’s be perfectly honest here) impressively thick and/or racist people.
But… nobody is saying that. Indeed, emphasis is consistently being put on how piss-poor this specific attempt is. Indeed, it’s hard to imagine how the UK could have screwed the pooch any harder on this. It is absolutely possible to leave the European Union. It is not possible to do so without some fairly significant economic hardships, but in a rational world, Britain would be aware of those problems and will have prepared for the contingencies, and worked out a deal with the EU that would minimize the harm.
But we live in a shit world, where the government itself covers up papers detailing how bad things are going to get, lest people start to get cold feet. We live in a world where the government tried to hire a ferry company as a contingency plan and it turned out the company owned zero ships. Is it possible to leave the EU? Sure! But May was not up to the task, and Johnson sure as hell ain’t up for the task. It’s like asking whether the US can win a war against Iraq. Sure! It’s just that maybe George W. Bush is the wrong man for the job, and if we’re stuck with him, we’d be better off calling the whole thing off.
Sure! But then what? What’s the worst-case scenario then? Is it worse than “no-deal Brexit under a Johnson administration”? If so: how?! Seems to me that the worst-case scenario then is “the worst-case scenario now, but delayed substantially”, and given that the best-case scenario is that Britain doesn’t fuck itself sideways, I’ll roll those dice any day of the week.
Any cite on any of that? Because this seems like senseless speculation about as reasonable as the last stupid idea Boris Johnson plastered on the side of a bus.
Did you mean GWB?
By the way, did Boris Johnson get any flak for his sexist comment about Jeremy Corbyn? The one where he called him a “great big girl’s blouse”, I mean.
Probably not enough:
OB
In the context of “things Boris has said recently” it’s one of the least offensive ones.
Suspension of Parliament ruled illegal.
Will be interesting to see what law(s) have been broken, and what remedy is available.
This could be huge.
Although the Government are already flinging accusations of Remainer bias at the Scottish judges.
This is a very unwise thing for them to be doing. The Lord Chancellor should have a word.
Number 10 is already backpedaling: Brexit: Boris Johnson's suspension of Parliament is unlawful, Scottish court rules -- Live updates
Does the Scottish court have national jurisdiction? Is its ruling binding on the PM and/or Parliament itself?: Court of Session - Wikipedia
As regards the rest of the UK, technically, no, it has no jurisdiction outside Scotland, and if the matter rested there, there’s another constitutional issue, given the independence debate.
But the judgement’s already overtaken by events, since as I understand it, the government is appealing against the decision in the Supreme Court (and a similar case in the English High Court, which ruled for the government, is also being appealed to the Supreme Court).
Excellent; thank you for the link. Glad to see that he’s been called out on it.
As the case was against the Westminster government, on a matter concerning the whole of the UK including Scotland, then the court’s decision is binding on the UK government.
Obviously the Supreme Court is involved now, and we’ll see what they think. That court has to decide between two fundamentally opposed positions, held by two of the three judicial systems governing the UK:
a) the reasons for prorogation are not justiciable - it’s a purely political decision (England and Wales), and
b) the reasons for prorogation are justiciable and the reasons have to be proper, and in this case they aren’t (Scotland)
It’s a bloody minefield…
When the Supreme Court has ruled, will the losing side then appeal the case to the European Court of Human Rights? 