Monday 9 September 2019

Plaid plan to impeach PM Johnson

Opposition party leaders should be ready to try to impeach the prime minister if he ignores a new no-deal Brexit law, say Plaid Cymru.
The BBC report that.....
...."Boris Johnson has "already driven a bulldozer through the constitution", said Plaid's Westminster Leader, Liz Saville Roberts.
The law, which should gain royal assent on Monday, aims to stop the UK exiting the EU with no deal on 31 October.
Number 10 has been contacted for comment.
No prime minister has ever successfully been impeached but Mr Johnson himself previously supported a bid to impeach Tony Blair when he was PM in 2004.
It is method by which Parliament can try individuals for high treason or other misdemeanours, but it is now considered to be obsolete.
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The Brexit cross-party bill - which requires the prime minister to extend the exit deadline until January unless Parliament agrees a deal with the EU by 19 October - was passed on Friday.
sut the PM has said he would "rather be dead in a ditch" than ask for a delay.
Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said previously that the government would abide by the law but would "look very carefully" at its "interpretation" of the legislation.
But legal experts have warned the prime minister could go to prison if he refuses to comply with the new law.
Ms Saville Roberts, MP for Dwyfor Meirionnydd, said she would be telling opposition party leaders that they should be ready to impeach Mr Johnson if he ignores the new law.
"Boris Johnson has already driven an bulldozer through the constitution, so no longer are ideas like impeachment farfetched," she said.
"If the prime minister becomes a law-breaker, we have an even stronger case for impeachment than the very cause he advocated back in 2004.
"No one is above the law, Boris Johnson shouldn't risk finding that out the hard way.
"No PM would want to play fast and loose with views he held on such matters in the past."
Of the "Constitution" is unwritten  and the reality is that we have a democratic institution that works by a cozy consensus that no Government should ignore the majority of parliamentarians.
Arguably  it has been broken many times and the two Major parties Labour and Tories simply allow the other to legislate in the theory that it all changes when they are in Number 10.
The recent legal challegenses on Boris Johnson  plans to shut down parliament so it can't stop a No-Deal Brexit , have not so far been successful  and I imagine the interpreters of the Law (Judges) rather than the makers (Government) who are probably Conservative politically would be reluctant to impeach the Prime Minister.
But one wonders  how far Johnson is taken his Party from "Traditional Conservatism" and the fact that he has expelled his Tory  opponents at Westminster,  his own Brother has quit and Amber Rudd resignation has created a coup within the party , could influence the Law Lords , to think that this is not a normal Tory government.

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