LETTER: PM is enacting the decision of the people

With Brexit now imminent, the government has business it needs to get done. It needs a Queen’s speech to do that business.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson .Prime Minister Boris Johnson .
Prime Minister Boris Johnson .

As a law student, studying constitutional law many years ago, we were frequently told how “wonderfully flexible” the British constitution was.

But constitutions shouldn’t be that flexible and I argued that position. It should provide certainty about how we are governed, what the rules are and what our rights are as citizens.

It should provide checks and balances on government power.

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For example, it was our wonderfully flexible constitution which in 1973 allowed us to be taken into the then Common Market, without the people agreeing to it via a referendum.

That same wonderfully flexible constitution was how successive governments were able to deny the people a say, every time they ceded more power to what became the EU. It was how Blair and Brown denied us a promised say on the Lisbon Treaty, which rose phoenix-like from the ashes of the EU Constitution, being 90 per cent the same thing, in a different packet.

Parliament has had over three years to sort out Brexit. It failed because there are 650 MPs and 400 of them don’t really want to Leave and they don’t care what the people voted for. The LibDems have even admitted that in any second referendum they won’t accept the result, unless it is for Remain!

The real reason that politicians are now screaming about constitutional outrages and talking about The Reichstag, is not because Boris Johnson is doing anything wrong, or unlawful.

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It is because he is refusing to bend that flexible constitution in their direction and he is making them do what they agreed to do at the outset... to enact the decision of the people.

Tony Homewood

Ossett