Did you see that Prince William went back up to Balmoral this weekend and did another church-ride with the Queen? The Cambridges were in Scotland several weeks ago for a visit as a family, but they only stayed for a few days (just long enough for a budget-flight photo-op). But it appears William left Kate and the kids at home in London for a few days to make a solo trip to Scotland again. It feels… suspicious, honestly. Especially given that the Queen did the church-ride with the Duke of York two Sundays ago. Why is the Queen making such a public show of protecting Andrew and William? Hm.
Anyway, the church-ride photos are another reminder that the Queen is still in residence in Scotland and she’s been trying to stay above the political fray of Boris Johnson and the “prorogued” Parliament. The Queen gave BoJo’s prorogue scheme the greenlight last month, after which #AbolishTheMonarchy trended on Twitter and there were larger conversations about whether the Queen had other constitutional options. On September 11th, the Scottish high court declared the prorogue to be unlawful. And now Britain’s Supreme Court says the same.
Britain’s highest court dealt a major blow on Tuesday to Prime Minister Boris Johnson, ruling that his controversial decision to suspend Parliament was unlawful, in a landmark judgment that will have immediate implications for Britain’s departure from the European Union. In one of the most high-profile cases to come before Britain’s Supreme Court, the 11 judges ruled unanimously that Johnson had not acted lawfully in shuttering Parliament.
The court ruled that Johnson’s decision to ask Queen Elizabeth II to suspend Parliament essentially frustrated the ability of lawmakers to do the business of democracy, including debating Johnson’s plans for Brexit.
Brenda Hale, president of the Supreme Court, eviscerated the government’s case. Sitting in the high court, Hale said that Johnson’s decision to suspend Parliament “was unlawful because it had the effect of frustrating or preventing the ability of Parliament to carry out its constitutional functions without reasonable justification.” The court unanimously found that Johnson’s suspension was “void and of no effect,” meaning, essentially, that Parliament has not been suspended.
Opposition leaders said that they planned to reenter Westminster Palace on Wednesday and were awaiting a call from the John Bercow, the flamboyant speaker of the House of Commons, to bring them back into session.
“This is an absolutely momentous decision,” said Joanna Cherry, a Scottish politician who helped to launch the case in the Scottish courts. Speaking immediately after the bombshell decision, Cherry there was nothing to stop parliamentarians from returning to work immediately. She also called on Johnson to step down.
“The highest court in the United Kingdom has unanimously found that his advice to prorogue this Parliament, his advice given to Her Majesty the Queen was unlawful. His position is untenable. He should have the guts for once to do the decent thing and resign,” she said.
“…His advice given to Her Majesty the Queen was unlawful…” Well, that’s one way to look at it. But here’s a question: didn’t the Queen and her advisors know that BoJo’s prorogue scheme was unlawful at the time? There was a huge outcry at the time, there was a huge conversation about how BoJo was trying to shove through a hard Brexit, etc. I just feel like the Queen is getting off way too easy here, and everyone is bending over backwards to make it seem like the Queen is just an innocent pencil-pusher who was lied to. It’s like no one in government wants to admit that the Queen might have greenlighted the prorogue scheme because… she agreed with BoJo and she’s pro-Brexit.
Photos courtesy of Getty.
What a mess
Yes, Drumpf and Boris make a lovely couple, don’t they?
She doesn’t actually *have* the power to say no to him. He was just informing her, she has to agree with him. Disagreeing with him would bring more trouble. I think she did the smart thing knowing he can’t actually get away with it.
She *can* say no, but there’s an unwritten agreement that she won’t and it would cause her bigger problems if she used that power in terms of the continuation of the monarchy.
Look the bottom line is bitch knows better. This includes her spawn. She collects cash being a figure head and puts her so-called duty over country. Like republicans here.
Burn it all down. End the old ways, die out the ones who follow the old rules and only then may we possibly see some change. Baby boomers are still alive and still influential. I want to see the progressive future replace them, not another replacement of them.
Then why, in either case, are UK taxpayers funding her if she serves no purpose in the government?
That’s my question, too.
It’s what we all wonder, same for Commonwealth countries. There has been referendums in Australia about removing the monarch as the leader and ppl vote to keep the Queen even if there’s not even the tourist excuse down there. I sure hope we could have a similar question here in Canada, I don’t understand why we still have them as rulers, especially given the costs of maintaining a general governor.
@STRIPE – yeah, same. I think once the Queen dies (because she’s relatively popular) people will start the conversation in earnest.
@Stripe, Excellent questions. Hopefully some Brit CBers with legal knowledge will chime in with opinions.
People still find the royal family because it benefits wealthy people in the UK to maintain a society that has classes
As long as Elizabeth Mountbatten-Windsor is allowed to keep titles and “position” the rest of the riffs are allowed to keep their titles and position and, most importantly, keep a whole bunch of other people out.
Don’t use titles, don’t bow or curtesy, and vote in next referendum to ditch them (I’m in New Zealand). Uggg they are disgusting and an affront to an egalitarian society.
Also screw using the terms Dame and Sir. They are a way of pulling more people into the orbit that titles mean something. I’m disappointed every time and actor/tress uses them.
The Queen is a figurehead. It would have been more of a constitutional crisis if she HAD disobeyed the will of the PM. Ugly as this whole thing is, it is showing exactly how a working democracy functions in the face of a fascist moron. What we have seen, both in her Maj’s acquiescence and the ruling today, is that no one person is above the law and workings of parliament, regardless of how much we like what they do -or we imagine they would do.
Can someone explain to me: isn’t this already considered a constitutional crisis that happened to be resolved with this Supreme Court judgement? Genuine question.
It would not have been a constitutional crisis if she had said no to proroguing Parliament since it’s one of the few things she can say no to. It just would have made things messier for her and this way she can continue to grouse shoot.
Exactly! The unwritten rule is for the monarch to agree to the PM’s requests, that’s how monarchy in the UK survived whereas the French and Russian royal families were executed…
Those opposed to BoJo’s request did what’s expected in a democracy and asked for the Court to decide, it’s a far better way to deal with this mess than wishing for a non-elected 93yo to go against the rules and the PM. And it worked!
@T. Fanty…THANK YOU…so much for providing a viewpoint that I hadn’t even THOUGHT OF…and for highlighting on WHY what is going on in America is just….UNTHINKABLE…OUR SCOTUS IS JUST…A BASTION OF FASCISM!
Thank you thank you thank you. She is not just a rubber stamp and her advisors should have told her this. She looks bad and comes across as useless.
Ugh not today Satans mom.
The Queen tends to stick her head in the sand. I think she’s more likely to have taken the view that it would be worse for the monarchy to block the Prime Minister. And the continuation of the monarchy is her priority.
Really the Sussex tour couldn’t have come at a better time for The Queen. The Cambridges are trying a bit with the fluffy Hello magazine cover, but it’s the tour that will draw the attention away from the Queen’s involvement in politics and Pedo Andy’s problems.
The Queen just doesn’t have that power here, she’s a figurehead who stays out of the political fray. We have a lot of ceremony that’s been handed down over the centuries but these days they’re ceremonial activities pure and simple.
The Queen as laid out in parliamentary rules has the royal prerogative to not prorogue Parliament if she does not want to. It is one of the few powers she has that is delineated. She could have said no, here. The thing is, there is no reason for her to be only a figurehead- that is the role she has made it into, however. It’s according to her own precedents, not the rules, in this case. She gave it the quick rubber stamp and we should be examining that.
I think that if we don’t abolish the monarchy we should vote for whom in the family we want as queen or king. Obviously, Harry or Meghan would be elected and we would have a monarch of the 21rst century, not somebody Victorian stuck up wooden man-child.
Edit: this Ian my reaction to those saying that the Queen has to go the status quo way, to create balance. Have you looked at the news lately?! Where is the balance? Everything is in shambles! We basically are not rules at the moment, no decisions are being made. This is a suspended state.
How did voting work out for Brexit?
Lol you H&M fans are delusional!! They would never be elected by the british people!
Yeah, you’re right let’s abolish democracy.
You have no idea how many people voted misinformed or for laughs because anyway it was going to be ‘remain’.
Also, this is my way of saying – far more important – that, since we have a monarchy, the Queen should make a stand in a moment where everything is going to sh*t.
I think if we get rid of the monarchy, a republic in the direction of France and Germany is the way to go. But, we need a written constitution first.
William was at Balmoral for the Ghillies Ball, which thanks the Queens staff at Balmoral. He’s gone the last few years.
I’d like to assume one of HM’s advisers locked Andrew in a bathroom to make sure someone else was in that seat.
This is just a mess. i’m glad Parliament is still in session. I understand the arguments that the Queen didn’t really have much of a choice here, but then I also understand the people who are saying “what’s her purpose,” especially timed with the pictures of Prince Andrew riding with her to church. It just adds another messy layer to this messy situation.
I’m not well-versed in the British law enough to know the ins and outs of her choice and if she even had a choice. However, the wording of the headlines are clearly designed to protect her. I’m so sick of her fragile narrative – she’s just a mom believing her son! She’s just a monarch believing her Prime Minister! She’s so innocent.
The word isn’t innocent. It’s complicit.
The monarchy constitues a way to deceive the people, telling them who would have a democracy where all the world will be equal and that the sovereign will have a role of guardian of the democracy. Whereas in real the sovereign is useless and the only procuration is to protect the monarchy. Consequently the decision of Queen, not angry me because she acted like that because she thought she was protecting the monarchy but the press favorable to the monarchy, always saying that she has a great political experience because she reign for so long and she what work many prime ministers.So when asking him to suspend parliament for such obvious political reasons,
she can not ask his advisers, members of parliaments or even the supreme court if that is perfectly legal before answering.
Does anyone know how mentally with-it the Queen is these days? She’s 93 and she’s very, very sheltered. We know that in the 80s the courtiers would shield her (and Charles) from lurid news headlines they thought might upset her. I can’t help wondering if she’s simply unaware of so much that we take for granted (eg Meghan smear campaign, recent details of Andrew/Epstein) and that people like Andrew and BoJo are using her to their own advantage. Like maybe she has memory loss and thinks she was just riding to church with her son/grandson, like she does every year? I’m not defending her, she certainly knew what was up for most of her life and acted to preserve her own status. But today, she’s a nonagenarian, and I have to wonder how sharp she really is.
I have wondered about how mentally with it she really is.
My mom at her age was ok and could take care of her personal needs but was not up to making really serious legal decisions.
I think by the time that you get to that age, you have to pick and choose where you want your mental focus to be. I have an elderly relative who is in her 90s, she gets a little bit confused sometimes about what day it is, or how to get somewhere, or what someone’s name is, but mention tennis to her, and she’s immediately rattling off all the players’ standings and stats and reminiscing about some minor point from last year’s Wimbledon. So, unless she’s suffering from some kind of dementia, I assume the queen could still be sharp about the queening business if she was interested in doing so…
I’ve wondered whether the people around her (Andrew, the Cambridges) are using her for photo-ops without the Queen being aware that’s what they’re doing? It doesn’t necessarily make her senile, but just not in touch with what’s happening in the news or people’s motivations. This is an unpopular opinion, but my impression is that the members of the royal family are not very smart, including the Queen (Charles is supposedly the brightest of them), and that the Queen – despite her position – is not a “people person” and doesn’t connect to people or understand their feelings and motivations. Maybe that’s the price of growing up isolated?
It was definitely a dick move, but wasn’t unlawful until it was ruled unlawful. It was previously considered a political matter, not a legal one.
Everyone, this constitutional issue really really isn’t about the Queen. That’s missing the whole point which is to do with the extent of the government’s powers. Have a look on the Supreme Court website (www.supremecourt.uk). Paragraph 30 of the decision states explicitly that this was the Prime Minister’s decision and that this isn’t about the Queen. It’s such a distraction – it’s like the 3 cup trick – you’re looking at the wrong cup. This is about the sovereignty of Parliament. It’s about the government of the U.K. of which the Queen plays no part. The decision in question was to shut down parliament and stop it carrying out its function at a critical time. It’s the content of the Prime Minister’s decision – not the fact the procedurally he gives the advice to do this to the Queen – which is of significance.
Good points!
A photo op with Will ( who possibility had a age appropriate, while morally wrong not illegal affair) or a shit eating grin photo with Andy, a man that reaped the benefits of a underage sex trafficking ring.
Well, if she couldn’t say no, why say yes either? Demur. Isn’t that what figureheads are noted for (as well as being a drain on the national purse)?
Do Brits have a little more appreciation for Theresa May now? That woman gave her all to try to make an impossible situation work.