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United Kingdom
Related: About this forumWe're being led by the boys whose dogs ate their homework
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Where has the gravitas gone??????
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We're being led by the boys whose dogs ate their homework (Original Post)
Soph0571
Feb 2019
OP
Batten had a good week - he wrote to the queen, accusing her of treason
muriel_volestrangler
Feb 2019
#1
muriel_volestrangler
(102,818 posts)1. Batten had a good week - he wrote to the queen, accusing her of treason
and asking her to shut down parliament to preserve parliamentary supremacy.
Gerard Battens letter also informs the monarch that she should never have approved the 1992 Maastricht treaty as it made her, and everyone else in the UK, citizens of the EU, and was thus unlawful and treasonous.
...
Batten begins by saying he is formally petitioning the Queen under the 1689 Bill of Rights, which established the notion of parliamentary supremacy. He argues the current crop of MPs were elected to uphold the result of the 2016 referendum and thus take the UK out of the EU.
It is evident that these same members of parliament are attempting by all and any means to thwart this result, he writes. They are accordingly in breach of their pledges to you and us, your citizens, and of a longstanding constitutional convention whereby parliament must implement the will of the people expressed in a popular vote, and are bound by electoral manifestos which have received popular assent at general elections.
Therefore, I ask Your Majesty to thwart their efforts and to prorogue parliament from now until after 29 March 2019, which is the agreed date set aside in the Withdrawal Act of Parliament of 2018 when the United Kingdom will leave the European Union.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/jan/31/ukip-leader-gerard-batten-asks-queen-to-suspend-parliament-to-thwart-remain-mps
...
Batten begins by saying he is formally petitioning the Queen under the 1689 Bill of Rights, which established the notion of parliamentary supremacy. He argues the current crop of MPs were elected to uphold the result of the 2016 referendum and thus take the UK out of the EU.
It is evident that these same members of parliament are attempting by all and any means to thwart this result, he writes. They are accordingly in breach of their pledges to you and us, your citizens, and of a longstanding constitutional convention whereby parliament must implement the will of the people expressed in a popular vote, and are bound by electoral manifestos which have received popular assent at general elections.
Therefore, I ask Your Majesty to thwart their efforts and to prorogue parliament from now until after 29 March 2019, which is the agreed date set aside in the Withdrawal Act of Parliament of 2018 when the United Kingdom will leave the European Union.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/jan/31/ukip-leader-gerard-batten-asks-queen-to-suspend-parliament-to-thwart-remain-mps
It's not just the stupidity of asking the queen to suspend parliament in a pre-1689-style move; or linking that to the 1689 settlement which established parliament as independent; or saying that preparing to be able to postpone the EU leaving date is somehow breaking some pledge (and I note that, a day or two after the government succeeded in getting the Cooper amendment voted down, they were openly and happily saying "we may have to postpone leaving" ; or saying that the queen did something unlawful and treasonous in approving an international agreement that the 'supreme' parliament had agreed to.
It's also the sheer tactlessness of putting the accusation of her and her advisers' treason in the same letter in which he asks her to insert herself in politics more than any monarch has done in 300 years.
What a dolt.
T_i_B
(14,816 posts)2. Never mind gravitas
How about basic research, attention to detail and actually listening to people who know what they are talking about?
LeftishBrit
(41,315 posts)3. Indeed!
The King of Prussia
(745 posts)4. FAKE NEWS ALERT... It isn't 35 pages long
32 apparently