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Showing posts from January, 2017

The political minefield on the road to Brexit

Brexit produces a whole load of weird conundrums, confrontations and contortions, doesn’t it? The Supreme Court has given Parliament the right to decide on the triggering of Article 50, as it was agreed by 8 votes to 3 that it requires a statute and cannot be waved through by Theresa May using Royal Prerogative. Those supportive of the Gina Miller case like to regale us with stories about the constitution (uncodified) and The Civil War and the Witan of the Anglo-Saxons and God knows what else. They were affronted and astonished that the government even dared to appeal the original High Court judgment. The argument for parliamentary sovereignty in this case was so glaringly obvious that even a child could understand it. Rather strange, in that case, that three of the learned justices on the Supreme Court actually dissented. They must be pretty thick. Maybe they never saw those three-line memes summarising the case on Twitter? Anyway, after all the hullabaloo, you’d th

Why foreign policy will be Trump's downfall

Predicting Trump’s trajectory is hard, because the territory is uncharted. A rogue rocket has launched from Cape Canaveral with a nuclear warhead on board and we’re hoping that when it crashes and burns, it doesn’t take out downtown Orlando. All the famous checks and balances built into the American political system? The ones designed to stop tyranny and to act as a firewall against the agenda of a power-hungry megalomaniac? They will be tested to the full by Donald J Trump, believe me. Part of the problem is that no one – from the founding fathers onwards – could ever have predicted anyone quite like this man claiming power. The political establishment and the constitutional experts might have imagined a calculating crook or an ideological extremist assuming the presidency. But the pussy-grabbing, China-baiting, tweet-firing freakshow that is Trump? He’s just not in the instruction manual. It’s beyond question that it will all end in tears.  The only issue is whose tears?