In that previous post I found myself saying:
I can just about conceive circumstances in which “Royal Prerogative” might need to be invoked — short of a declaration of War. Say the administration of a devolved Assembly became totally unmanageable …
That post was already over-long, so I omitted the small matter of:
This is an interesting document, because (at the end of the last Labour government) it attempted to identify where the Royal prerogative persisted; and even where it should be going.
Not entirely surprisingly, once Tories are running the show, that script-line gets lost. We haven’t entirely overcome the ancient Royalist and Roundhead cleavage.
One surprise, though, was just how restricted the Prerogative had become:
All of a sudden, it looks “containable”, though there’s an obvious (and very relevant in the context here) quibble in the final sentence there.
When we arrive at the “summary” of the document’s purpose:
to provide an overview of areas where ministerial prerogative powers are exercised, or have been exercised recently
Here again we encounter an account of Prerogative with a particular significance in the #Brexit context:
Happily, on that basis, Messers Boris Johnson, Neil Fox and David Davis (messers all), with Madame May “directing”, can carry on diplomatically. Not that diplomacy seems to have been the name of their recent games.
May be I’m being picky (what’s new?) but then I have to see something awry:
The “Power to make and ratify treaties” doesn’t logically extend to abrogating them.
And that’s what Article 50 does.
