On 27/09/2019 13:58, michael adams wrote:
"Norman Wells" wrote in message
...
On 27/09/2019 09:40, michael adams wrote:
"Norman Wells" wrote in message
...
On 27/09/2019 01:07, The Todal wrote:

Once the claimants had overcome the hurdle of "judiciable"

Which was the finely balanced point concerned.

Two straight questions Norman.

a) Supposing for one awful moment that such a thing could happen,
is it ever permissable for a Prime minister of the UK to lie to the
Monarch in the course of his duties ?

If the Queen is just a rubber stamp, I don't think it matters much
what he says to her,
if indeed he actually has to say anything at all. She can't do anything
about it anyway, so she might well think sod it, it's just another
annoying bit of paper I have to sign on my hols, here it is, now go
away and stop bothering me.

In which case Boris could have asked her to porogue Parliament
for say six months, a year, maybe up until shortly before the date
of the next General Election as determined by the Fixed Term Parliament
Act which would mean a nice holiday for him and his chums , with his
job at the Telegraph to go back to at the end and there would be damn
all the Queen could do about it ?

Exactly. She has to do what she's told, or create a constitutional
crisis which some of her ancestors have found very painful.

The above actually is a bit of a killer argument when you think
of it

No, because then the eleven horsemen of the Supreme would ride gallantly
to her rescue and pretend she hadn't signed anything on a blank sheet of
paper.

It's how fairy stories work.

But was there in fact any conversation about it between Boris and the Queen? I thought
he just sent his favourite Privy Counsellors including that nice Mr Rees-Mogg, rather
ridiculously all the way up to Balmoral, to get a bit of paper signed, and bring it
back personally.

See above.


Perhaps they haven't caught up with fax machines in Scotland yet.

b) If it isn't, then in the highly unlikely even of that possibly happening,
how exectly could that fact be established, and by whom ?

Well, it can't be of course. Conventionally and constitutionally,
conversations between the monarch and the Prime Minister have always
been totally confidential. So, it can only be deduced or assumed by
hearsay, which normal courts dismiss out of hand.

But if its assumed that the Queen is shown the courtesy of being given
a reason,

Why does any reason need to be given to a rubber stamp?

It's an utter waste of time.

otherwise as above, what's to stop any PM from proroguing
Parliament for any length of time whenever they see choppy waters ahead,
at least until the heat dies down, then all the possible reasons which
could have been given are easily deducible, and subject to outside
scrutiny as in this case.

Basically there are only so many reasons any PM could have for proroguing
Parliament and the Queen knows that as well as anyone.

She cannot interfere. We had a civil war and a deliberately shortened
monarch to establish that.

Having not spoken to her myself recently it would only be a guess, that Her
Majesty was advised to grant Boris his wish, on the assumption that it
might well be subsequently challenged in the Courts, as indeed it was.

Everyone assumes the Queen along with her advisors are so dumb that
they didn't themselves envisage the possibility of subsequent legal
action.

I don't think that's anything for her to worry about. So what if
there's subsequent legal action? She did what she was required to do,
and is immune anyway. It was never going to be her appearing in one of
her own courts.