On the Record | Brexit: What Would Odysseus Do?

Please see my latest wire as Brexit diarist for The New York Sun, ‘Brexit: What Would Odysseus Do?’:

Prime Minister Boris Johnson, a Classical scholar while a student at Oxford, may be thinking of Odysseus and his men who, homeward bound after their exploits at Troy, must navigate their ship between the twin dangers of Scylla and Charybdis — a six-headed sea monster and whirlpool, respectively — that threaten their destruction.

Even more gruesomely, Mr. Johnson, at the helm of the ship of state, must extricate his ministry from a constitutional dilemma, on Britain’s course for independence from the European Union.

Mere weeks before the UK is legislated to leave the EU, Brexit opponents have devised a Greek tragedy to stymie the Government. Remainers passed a motion allowing them to take over the “order paper,” effectively giving them control of parliamentary business. Their objective? To bring a bill before the Prime Minister, forbidding Britain to leave the EU on WTO terms, if he is unable to negotiate a successful trade deal before the October deadline.

Such is only the official rationale to stop “No Deal,” though. Don’t be fooled. The ultimate goal is to keep Britain ensnared in Brussels’ grip, through a withdrawal agreement that keeps it bound to regulatory and judicial fiat. Better yet, to annul Article 50 altogether and keep the UK within the EU, voiding the 2016 referendum to exit.

Adding insult to injury, Mr. Johnson cannot call for a general election to give him a fresh mandate. Never mind that he is leading in the polls. Legislation enacted in 2011, the Fixed-term Parliaments Act, requires a two-thirds vote in the Commons for the prime minister to request the Crown to “drop the writs.” So the Government faces the prospect of being legally mandated to go to Brussels to request an extension without being able to call for an election to avoid this humiliation.

Boris confronts the Brexit version of Scylla and Charybdis.

Read more . . .

Remarks are welcome on DMI’s Facebook page.

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My thanks to editor Seth Lipsky of The New York Sun.

On the Record | Contra the Remainers, Britons’ Right to Liberty Justifies Brexit

Please see my latest wire for The American Spectator, ‘Contra the Remainers, Britons’ Right to Liberty Justifies Brexit’:

British parliamentarians returning to work this week will be thrust immediately back into the Brexit fray. Tempus fugit, as the Romans say, and with the October 31 deadline for leaving the European Union mere weeks away, there’s no time to lose in the debate over whether or not Britain will achieve its independence.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s decision to ask Elizabeth II to prorogue Parliament from September 11 (the likely start date) to the Queen’s Speech on October 14, so as to clear the political calendar for domestic business, has excited the expected howls of protest. But as Westminster was scheduled to be in recess anyway for the parties to hold their annual autumn conferences, it is likely no more than four or five days will be lost to Brexit mayhem.

No matter. While anti-Brexiteers outside Parliament are searching for ways to stop Boris’s prorogation — an unlikely event, given conventions dealing with royal prerogatives and the unwillingness of the judiciary to cross the line into the jurisdiction of the purely political — inside Parliament the usual suspects are preparing legislation to force the Government, in lieu of reaching a withdrawal deal, to ask the EU for yet another extension to the end of January 2020.

If anti-Brexiteers are successful in passing legislation forbidding Britain to leave on WTO terms — “No Deal” — what is the Government to do? MPs critical of Brexit plead they act in the spirit of British democracy. They are wrong. Their machinations in favor of the EU are in direct defiance of the people’s referendum vote three years ago to exit.

These shenanigans in the House of Commons pervert its historic role to hold the Executive to account, whether in the form of an “absolute” monarch or a prime minister leading a cabinet government. But the aim of the Commons has never been to usurp and abrogate authority to itself in defiance of the party in power.

Read more . . .

Remarks are welcome on DMI’s Facebook page.

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My thanks to editor Wlady Pleszczynski of The American Spectator.