Quote:
Originally Posted by Hugh
That’s why it is being mooted as being unlawful, not illegal.
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I’ll be surprised if their lordships go for that.
Prorogation has been occurring on advice from the PM without any specific parliamentary authorisation for centuries. How could the Supreme Court possibly judge which previous prorogations were allowable and which were not? If no reasons for prorogation have ever been authorised, which reasons can be said to be unauthorised? And even if it is possible to show that prorogation intended to kill legislation or scrutiny was unlawful, in the present context it is an uncomfortable truth, from the appellants point of view, that this prorogation ended the longest parliamentary session since the English civil war. The “legitimate” reason to prorogue in such circumstances is extremely powerful.
If I were a betting man, I’d be betting that the judges will decline to go anywhere near it. I suspect that tomorrow they will observe that advice to prorogue was given without parliamentary authorisation just as it has always been, that it therefore is not unlawful, and that parliament has the right to determine when and how prorogation should occur in future if it so chooses.