UK Trade Union Boss Warns PM Johnson of ‘Citizen’s Arrest’ for Suspending Parliament
Angry remarks come after top Scottish court rules parliament suspension “unlawful.”
A leading UK trade union boss warned Prime Minister Boris Johnson of “citizen’s arrest” for suspending the parliament ahead of the October 31 Brexit deadline.
Len McCluskey, head of the Labour party’s largest affiliated trade union UNITE, made the comments after a Scottish court ruled the recess decision “unlawful.”
The angry remarks by McCluskey come amid a series of assaults on prominent pro-Brexit and right-wing figures.
Earlier this year, Brexit campaigner Nigel Farage, Islam critic Tommy Robinson, and other prominent leaders faced attacks by far-left activists. The leftist assailants were lauded and cheered by the British Liberal commentators and Brexit opponents. Johnson and members of his cabinet have also faced hostile agitators on the streets as the UK heads towards Brexit.
British newspaper The Independent covered the remarks made by McCluskey and other union bosses :
Boris Johnson has been warned he could face a “citizen’s arrest” by a senior union boss after the prime minister’s decision to suspend parliament was ruled unlawful by Scotland’s highest court. (…) Len McCluskey, general secretary of the Unite union, told Sky News: “It is quite extraordinary what the Scottish courts have ruled.
“My advice to the prime minister is don’t go up to Scotland, you’re liable to face a citizen’s arrest, so he’d best keep in his bunker somewhere in either Eton or Westminster.” (…)
TSSA [transport workers’ union] leader Manuel Cortes, who backs a second referendum, said the “shameful” prime minister should be behind bars, rather than in Downing Street.
Underrated by today’s judicial ruling, the UK government has vowed to challenge decision handed down by Scotland’s highest appeals court.
“We are disappointed by today’s decision, and will appeal to the UK Supreme Court,” the UK Prime Minister’s office said in response to the judgment. Johnson’s aides also questioned the impartiality of Scottish judges, calling them ‘politically biased, the British Daily Telegraph reported.
The Brexiteers face not only a rigged political system but also a biased judiciary, Telegraph columnist John Longworth suggested. “The Scottish court prorogation ruling shows the anti-Brexit Establishment is hard at work,” Longworth wrote following the Scottish ruling. The “British Establishment” is very apt at “keeping a grip on their privilege,” he added.
The Irish Times reported today’s court judgment:
Scottish appeal court judges have declared that Boris Johnson’s decision to suspend parliament in the run-up to the October Brexit deadline is unlawful.
The three judges, chaired by Lord Carloway, Scotland’s most senior judge, overturned an earlier ruling that the courts did not have the powers to interfere in the UK prime minister’s political decision to prorogue parliament.
The judges said the prorogation was “improper” and done with “the purpose of stymying parliament”. It was therefore “null and of no effect”.
Lawyers acting for 75 opposition MPs and peers argued Mr Johnson’s decision to suspend parliament for five weeks was illegal and in breach of the constitution, as it was designed to stifle parliamentary debate and action on Brexit.
There are still signs that the European Union might blink if Johnson sticks to the October 31 deadline.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel hinted that Brussels might offer Britain a deal even at the last minute. “We still have every chance of getting an orderly (Brexit) and the German government will do everything it can to make that possible – right up to the last day. But I also say we are prepared for a disorderly Brexit,” Mrs. Merkel told the German parliament today.
The British parliament has voted to delay Brexit if the EU fails to agree to a deal before the October 31 deadline. Johnson called the legislation passed by the parliament a “surrender” document and vowed to push for a no-deal Brexit — if all fails.
“It’s Jeremy Corbyn’s surrender bill,” Johnson declared in the House of Commons on Tuesday. “It means running up the white flag, and I want to make clear to everybody in this house there are no circumstances in which I will accept anything like it.” He reiterated that: the UK “will leave on October 31 in all circumstances. There will be no further pointless delays.”
Johnson’s motion calling for a snap election in mid-October failed to get the required two-thirds majority before the parliament entered a five-week suspension on Monday. The opposition Labour party has threatened a no-confidence vote to oust Johnson’s two-month-old government when the House reconvenes on October 14.
If the Labour party manages to topple the government, this could pave the way for a Corbyn-led caretaker government or force an early election.
Johnson and his Conservatives appear unprepared to face a general election at this time. The Conservative base has shifted markedly towards Nigel Farage’s newly-formed Brexit Party, as the outcome of the May 2019 EU elections showed.
Farage’s offer to “put country before party” and withdraw all Brexit Party candidates in favor of Tory contestants has gone unanswered by the Conservative leadership. The Conservative establishment despises Farage’s brand of “populism” and his working-class support base. According to a report in the Daily Telegraph, the prospect of an election pact with Brexit Party is “dead in the water.” The Conservative elite does not view Farage as a “fit and proper person” to agree with on government issues.
This elitist snobbery on the Right might prove fatal if the Conservative party decided to go it alone in the next elections. After three years of fruitless deliberations, the ruling Conservatives have miserably failed at delivering Brexit, thus losing the trust of their political base. Only a united Right has a fighting chance against the broad-based Left-Liberal alliance rallying under the EU’s banner.
[Cover image via YouTube]
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Comments
There is just no taking these commies seriously. They look, speak and act like angry lunatics.
Especially when the Scottish court immediately demanded more fifths right after the ruling!
Hiccup!
Scotland is the UK’s CA CA state.
Things must be worse up there than in the UK.
MUST SEE: (Explains a whole lot of how the traitor class of politicians in the UK have gotten away with it all.)
d e g e n e r a c y
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gK_0Yo-0r08
We’re Nearing the End of Democracy,
Because The Rabble Won’t Permit Their Thoughts to Be Controlled by a Smug and Non-Elite Elite Anymore – UC Irvine Professor – Ace of Spades
End of democracy near because cultural elites no longer control the media – UC Irvine Professor
https://hotair.com/archives/john-s-2/2019/09/09/uc-irvine-professor-end-democracy-near-cultural-elites-media/
Nigels says Labour wants to stop Brexit and wants to stop any Elections.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=seCLETrrbYw
Chancellor of Exchequer Sajid Javid MP…claims that Jeremey Corbyn is ‘ frightened of the electorate’ as Labour rejects plans to issue a snap election.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOzHUY-3GW0
Court review of parliament is an EU addition, as I recall.
Except that the court did not review an act of the Parliament. On the contrary, it supported the parliament against an executive act. Judicial review of the executive goes back centuries; but reviewing a royal prerogative is new. The Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011, which abolished the royal prerogative of dissolving parliament, specifically preserved that of proroguing it. It’s unprecedented for a court to presume to tell the Queen (acting on the advice of her ministers) that she can’t prorogue Parliament because the court doesn’t like her ministers’ motives for giving her that advice.
How dare the common people defy the leadership of the People’s Party?
Does the Scottish highcourt have jurisdiction in the UK?
I don’t think so!
It has jurisidiction in Scotland, which is an integral part of the UK.
Since Parliament sits in London, the question may have substance.
That’s why the threat of arrest for a political crime was conditioned on Johnson’s presence in Scotland.
Gomer Pyle.
My very thought …. running up to Barney yelling “citizens arrest, citizens arrest”.
me too!! Here it is: (short clip)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9efgLHgsBmM
Spot on!
And just like Barney, he’s not allowed any bullets unless they’re zipped tight in his inner-inner pants pocket! LOL
I guess your DOJ cant get you 7 ways form Sunday. Like Chuck You told Trump
“This elitist snobbery on the Right might prove fatal if the Conservative party decided to go it alone in the next elections. After three years of fruitless deliberations, the ruling Conservatives have miserably failed at delivering Brexit, thus losing the trust of their political base. ”
NeverTrumpers / GOPe, UK edition. Like their US counterparts, they’d rather be a Fifth Column than patriots.
s/Underrated/Undeterred
Now I understand why the Scots defeated their own Independence referendum
Scotland is nothing more than an authoritarian nanny state. Thank God my ancestors left that political sh*thole.
mine were more or less kicked out by the elites of the time.
You mean the “removals?”
Some of the first Globalists……..
Mine at least earned his deportation to Virginia by taking up arms against England’s Cromwellian regime. The Scots could have even won that one, if they hadn’t been led by Charles II.
This is just another example of the inability of parliamentary-style governments to function in a crisis. Those wishing for a US national popular vote should take note of this.
What on earth has “parliamentary government” (i.e. government by an executive that is responsible to the legislature) got to do with how the president is elected? They are completely unrelated issues.
If the US ever changes to a national popular vote then there won’t be just 3 presidential candidates, there will be 12, which will further split the other races as multiple parties become viable in each state. Eventually, the president will be elected with 27% of the vote, and have to form a governing coalition.
No, he won’t. No matter how he’s elected, he won’t need a coalition (where?) because he’ll have his own mandate. The method of electing the president has no connection at all to responsible government, which is where the need for coalitions comes about.
Ask yourself this: why are there only two political parties in the US? I think it’s because the Electoral College’s state-level winner-take-all approach to presidential elections forces all of the various factions across the country to join together into two, and only two, groups in order to have a chance of winning enough states to win the presidency. And those two organizations becomes the basis of nearly every political race in the country at every level. Change to a national popular vote for the presidency and it becomes much easier for smaller groups to form, further fracturing the electorate. Yes, there would still be only one president for four years, but we’ve seen well the limitations of presidential power without congressional support. Fracture congress into 6 or 8 separate parties and we’ll get something like what we’re witnessing in the U.K.
Why, it’s almost like it was planned that way.
The Electoral College has nothing to do with the absence of significant minor parties. A national vote would do nothing to help minor parties form, since they’d still have no chance of winning. The presidency would still be realistically contested only between the two major parties, with the minor parties playing spoiler roles, just like now.
Consider that the House of Representatives is elected in exactly the same way as the House of Commons. Single-member districts, won by the first past the post. So why are there minor parties in the Commons but not in the US House? Because there aren’t strong regional interests represented by regional parties. In the UK, while in most of the country most people support one of the two major parties, there are areas where a minor party is very strong, strong enough to get more votes than either of the two majors. Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and the traditional Liberal areas.
The same thing could easily happen in the US, but didn’t. A Southern Party could easily have formed in the ’50s-’60s, as the Dems moved away from supporting the interests of the local people. There were attempts to do this, that failed, but could easily have succeeded. The Green Party could soon win a few House seats in California. Or if a rift developed between the Black Caucus and the rest of the Dems, they could break off and form their own party, and carry their districts.
I think a bigger impact was made by the 17th Amendment. It helped kill (or at least stun) states’ sovereignty, and thereby hurt regionalism significantly.
The U.K. is not unique. A parliamentary system is synonymous with numerous political parties, around the world and throughout history. The US is unique with its two party system, and it endures in a very large and diverse country, much larger than the U.K. I stand by what I said, that this is due to the electoral college’s winner-takes-all vote in each state.
GWB:
First of all, it did no such thing. Senators represent the people of their states, just as they always did. The 17th merely stopped state legislative elections from being in effect proxy elections for senator.
Second, how could the rules for senate elections possibly dissuade anyone from voting for a local candidate for the House? On the contrary, if there were an opportunity for a local party to take root somewhere, having a chance at a senate seat would help it, not hinder it.
fast182:
That is just not true. Single-member districts work the same way everywhere. They punish small parties whose support is diffuse, but help parties whose support is concentrated into a small area, where they are in fact large parties. In other words, a party that gets 10% of the vote in every district won’t get any seats; but one that gets 50% in 20% of the districts and nothing in the other 80% will win a fair number of seats. Such parties happened to develop in the UK, Canada, and Australia, but not in the USA. Separating the executive from the legislature in those countries would not affect this at all.
A lot of people seem to confuse parliamentary government with proportional representation, which does by design encourage small parties. They have nothing to do with each other. The UK does not have PR.
FAST182 – I will not pretend to have any real knowledge of politics. However, I will point out that for many many years the UK had effectively a two party system; the US did not stand alone in that. Until perhaps 10 years ago, the main UK parties were Conservative (Thatcher, for example) and later Labour (Blair, for example), and I believe this was the case going back 70 years. While there have been other political parties over those years, they truly have been a minority, with perhaps the Liberal Democrats coming the closest to being a third real contending party.
Perhaps the main difference is that the UK has many constituencies (650?; each of which elects 1 MP), while the US has 50 states (each of which elects 2 Senators = 2 MPs). I personally equate the commons with the senate and the lords with the judiciary. Therefore there is a greater chance that the commons (senate) will have elected minority parties.
If one considers the 650 constituencies and the total number for electing a Prime Minister, it is possible that a popular vote would elect a PM, but that a majority in parliament could actually be of an opposing party.
“Scotland the Slave” … EU version with lyrics.
Scotland – the EU’s Step N Fetch it!
“Johnson and his Conservatives appear unprepared to face a general election at this time.”
Who the fuck writes this shit???
If who ever wrote this article was actually following what was going on they would know that Boris has forced three votes on Parlianent to call a snap election on the 14th of October and EVERYTIME the vote has been lost because Labour does not want an early election exactly because Labour fears a backlash due to its pro EU stance.
The Tories want this election so they can be rid of all the MP’s that betrayed the party and have sided with Labour.
Additionally, the case took all of 5 minutes this morning before the Justices declared prorogation was illigal.
Now ask yourself, what exactly was heard in a 5 minute hearing where no evidence from either side was actually heard.
In top of that the reason given was that the Justices divided the intentions of Boris were unlawful. This is some Denicrat Judge shit right there where they are basing judgements on the feeling that an action is being carried out fir nefarious reasons and not that the actions being carried out are constitutional (heres a hint, the action of prorogaring parliament is completely within the constitutional bounds of the Prime Minister).
The reason this was lodged in Scotland is the same reason people lodge law suits against Trump in Hawaii…because the judiciary is friendly towards the remoaners!!
There have been two other cases where the rulings found prorogation legal. One of them in Scotland and the other in England. The vast majority of legal experts expect the Supreme Court to side with Boris.
But heres the hypocritical thing about all this posturing…parliament is going to be closed for the next 3-4 weeks because its party conference time here in the UK. So basically all the MP’s would have fucked off anyway! Tge realitybis only 4 or 5 SITTING days were being lost because of prorogation!
Prorogation allows parliament to reset itself, which means that the opposition itself gets a number of formal days for it to table its business which it cannot do now because they have no opposition days available to them.
Finally, this is the longest session of Parliament since the 16th Century. Parliament is usually prorouged every year but it hasn’t been since 2016 when the establishment lost the referendum.
I am the f*ck who wrote what you describe as sh*t.
If the vote on the right gets divided between Johnson and Farage, there is no way Conservatives are getting back in office. Please refer to the EU elections numbers.
One would hope that both Boris and Farage would know that they have to unify to win. If they do try to go against each other, I believe you are right, they’d split the vote and each lose.
Let’s hope wisdom prevails. Farage made a generous offer. The ball is in Johnson’s court.
I am hoping there is a clear/no deal Brexit on October 31, and we won’t have to worry about the nitty-gritty of UK politics. But something tells me, the Brexit will be dragged beyond the October deadline.
Then you either get a fucking clue about what’s going on or you dont write shit about shit you have no clue about.
Here’s a clue for you. The tories are out polling Labour quite significantly.
But you knew that because you know what you are writing about right genius?
I have been writing on European politics for 6 years now and I’ll let my track record speak for itself.
We obviously see things differently. There is no need to get personal or abusive.
Perhaps Ive been a little mean with my criticism of your article Vijeta.
Although, just because you have been covering European politics doesn’t mean you know what you are talking about when it comes to the UK (or the UK and Europe when it comes to brexit).
This is from today’s Telegraph. But hey, what do I or they know:
“The Tories’ egotistical refusal to engage with the Brexit Party may spell their downfall”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/09/12/tories-egotistical-refusal-engage-brexit-party-may-spell-downfall/
after top Scottish court rules
Was Arlen Specter anywhere nearby?
Seriously, though, is it that Scottish law is a joke, or that these judges are merely acting as kings in judicial wigs (like our black-robed emperors in America)?
GWB,
The reason this case was held in Scotland is the same reason people go to Hawaii to sue the Trump administration.
Many legal “experts” here agree that there is very little chance of this ruling being upheld by the Supreme Court mostly because they are less worried about divining intentions and more concerned with precident and procedure.
Given there is plenty of precident (John Major even prorouged parliament to STOP MP’s being questioned over a very serious scandal before an election) and the procedure for proroguing parliament was followed to the letter there is very little chance of the Scottish decision being upheld.