Article 50 & Parliament

Article 50 & Parliament

The BBC reports that the High Court states that the Government needs Parliament’s permission to trigger the EU’s Article 50 Brexit process. The article is silent on whether Parliament has to express its will as a Law or joint house resolution; I’ll leave the last word to others more qualified, but I don’t think there is any other way to undo previous Parliamentary dispositions other than to pass a new law, which involves four readings and a committee stage in the Commons and the same in the Lords and potentially whatever we call the Conference process to resolve disagreements between the Houses. …

Cyber-amnesia

Jarred Anderson wrote an interesting little piece on Pulse, questioning how the right to be forgotten can be implemented in the block chain; in my view a false dichotomy since the right to be forgotten is being applied to search engines and the regulators’ need to prove non-repudiation will probably override citizens rights to privacy. It is even more interesting that he catalogues the jurisdictions implementing a strong right to privacy as Argentina and the EU; both places with histories of fascist, neo-fascist, stalinist regimes and murderous secret police forces. …

Steadfast

While I am sympathetic to the advocates of a “progressive alliance” working for a government committed to a Parliament elected by proportional representation, I do not think unilaterally, or even in conjunction with the Greens, withdrawing Labour’s candidate from the Richmond bye-election as proposed by is the right thing to do. Labour should of course consult its local membership and consider the candidate chosen by the LibDems but Labour’s voters in Richmond, who vote Labour for local councils, the Mayor of London, and the GLA deserve to be able to express their preference on the ballot paper. It is arrogance to think they can be directed! …

Paradox of the Republic

A short piece in the Guardian about the USA, arguing that ownership of guns is not a human right. These are arguments that most Europeans and probably most US citizens would approve. One of the problems in the US, is the “paradox of the Republic”; a Republic guarantees rights and protections to its citizens only, it refuses to recognise the universality of human rights. Human Rights are universal, the basis of world citizenship.

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A stitch in time

I really can  be a dense sometimes. When rump new labour resigned from the Shadow Cabinet last July. there were two noticeable absentees, Tom Watson and Jonathan Ashworth, both people one would expect to have supported the coup. Watson we assume failed to put his job on the line because getting it back would have involved fighting another Deputy Leadership election which he may well not have won. Ashworth was famously removed from the NEC earlier this month, this would have happened at the point he resigned from the Shadow Cabinet. I suspect that he didn’t do so in order to stay on the NEC. Which way did he vote on the freeze date, the rigging of the registered supporters class, the membership of the star chambers, and the gerrymandering of the NEC membership? …

Anti-Semitism

The article, Crying Wolf at Open Democracy calls out the double standards of the Commons Home Affairs Committee report on Anti-Semitism and the dangerous and missed opportunities. In particular it notes the honesty and forward looking nature of the Chakrabarti Inquiry Report into anti-semitism in the Labour Party and questions the motives of those who voted for the Commons Committee report which spends an inordinate amount of time, conducting an inaccurate and inadequate review of anti-semitism in the Labour Party and its recent responses. The article also looks in detail at the history of the development of  and needs for a working definition of anti-semitism. It does not quote David Schnieder’s but it does make the point that the definition chosen from the EUMC is questioned and never adopted by its authors and is considered to be too censorious of critics of the Israeli government. This is a comprehensive, temperate and critical treatment of the report. I recommend it be read by anyone interested in evidence based and just policy making. …