Report comment

Please fill in the form to report an unsuitable comment. Please state which comment is of concern and why. It will be sent to our moderator for review.

Comment

So, Lord Atkin, we knew you achieved nothing in Liversidge v Anderson at the time. Although everyone acknowledges you were right in theory, it seems in practice little in executive thinking has changed. Long live the wonderful, virtuous, bolshie arrogance of our judiciary: the only thing that stands between us and the holier-than-thou arrogance of our executive. Lord Atkin's Humpty-Dumpty government.

Oh, and @FreddieFrog 5:02
"One general has already hinted at a coup to remove a Labour government (if ever) led by Corbyn."

Sadly the reality is the opposite. The "major-generals" collectively is the only institution left that can save us from the established lawful power to create a formal one-person dictatorship, executed not by coup but by a simple declarative action whose effect is simultaneously to confer all powers of the executive, the legislative powers of Parliament, and the exercise of the Royal Prerogative all upon a single person, as provided and foreshadowed in Civil Contingencies Act 2004 and (astonishingly) subsequent secondary legislation. The judiciary may not be touched, but then nobody need be allowed into the RCJ either. The lawful prerequisites could be satisfied as simply as, say, flooding in a Northern town, or a terrorist act in Iraq aimed at nobody in particular. Read it, think about it, and weep. Only the military can lawfully block them then. Until of course the new combined head of state, head of government, and on-person parliament forces them to swear personal allegiance to him or her... deja vu?

And don't ever think they don't know all about this in the parliament: it was parliamentarians that asked me quietly (not as a client) for an opinion some years ago, without explaining why. Because of the obviously boring subject matter (from the name of the Act) I resisted for months, but they persisted until I succumbed. Unhappily, my conclusions and scenario analyses turned out to be identical to theirs.

Your details

Cancel