Group items tagged

the huge set of interests that oppose all EU regulation and that especially want to protect British tax havens for the international investor class. Johnson and Cummings are the shock troops of their shock doctrine

constitutions are not dry and arcane matters for lawyers and academics. Constitutions have complex parts just like the engine of your car or train, that need specialist mechanics. But constitutions are also about what kind of country we are, to whom our system of government belongs and the nature of its democracy

The Prime Minister claimed the lack of written rules means he can close down parliament when he likes and, in effect, that he and his advisors are beyond the law when it comes to exercising prerogative power. The Supreme Court disagreed. They held their nerve and dismissed such claims outright. But by doing so the judiciary has been forced by the Prime Minister’s own reckless actions to cast aside the de facto separation of judges and courts from the high politics of our country.

Every polity has a constitution, in that there can be a descriptive answer to the question of how that polity is constituted. A constitution provides for how the elements of the state are arranged; what each element of the state does and does not do; how tensions between those elements of the state are resolved; and the relationship of each element of the state with the individual.

In a happy polity there is not much issue about what each element of the state does. And when there are tensions – such as whether the government or parliament get to make a notification under Article 50, or whether the government can be obliged to publish certain papers when required by the legislature – there are means of resolving those tensions before they harden into contradictions. A constitutional crisis occurs when those tensions cannot be resolved.

These are exciting times to be a constitutional commentator. As one based in England, this must be the most exciting time to be a constitutional commentator since the 1680s. (Scottish, Irish and Welsh commentators may – and do – have different views.)

for many years the Conservatives were the party of quiet, practical constitutionalism. The party inspired by Edmund Burke (although himself a Whig); the party of Lord Salisbury and Lord Hailsham and Norman St John Stevas; the party responsible for life peerages, the Police and Criminal Evidence Act (in everyday terms the most important civil liberties legislation ever passed in the United Kingdom), the select committee system. It is even the Conservative party of all parties that can take the most credit for the European Convention on Human Rights (through David Maxwell-Fyfe) and the Single Market (Lord Cockfield).

Under David Cameron and his immediate predecessors, the Conservatives shifted to explicit but hostile ideological positions on constitutional issues complemented by casual disdain. Cameron, for example, insisted that the United Kingdom should repeal the Human Rights Act as a matter of principle. When Cameron was faced with a defeat in the House of Lords in respect of a welfare proposal that was then dropped, he threatened to “reform” the upper house. And when faced with a Speaker of the House of Commons who was not sufficiently obliging to the Conservatives, Cameron and his colleagues sought to get the Speaker replaced. A pattern began to emerge: strident and populist statements in public and cynical manoeuvring in practice.

The combination of Brexit (where the Conservatives persist in pretending that complex problems have easy solutions), the notion that a referendum result trumps parliamentary supremacy, and minority government for all but two years since 2010 have accelerated this anti- constitutionalist trend.

America already has an ISIS, a Taliban, an SS waiting to be born. A group of young men willing to do violence at the drop of a hat, because they’ve been brainwashed into hating. The demagogue has blamed hated minorities and advocates of democracy and peace for those young men’s stunted life chances, and they believe him. That’s exactly what an ISIS is, what a Taliban is, what an SS is. The only thing left to do by an authoritarian is to formalize it.

when radicalized young men are killing people they have been taught to hate by demagogues right in the open, on the streets — a society has reached the beginnings of sectarian violence, the kind familiar in the Islamic world, and is at the end of democracy’s road.

Crucial institutions have already been captured by the extremist factions who stand against democracy. Do all those cops think of themselves as fascists? Of course they don’t. So what? Mullahs don’t think of themselves as hate preachers, either. What else do you call someone who gives a violent young man with a gun a free pass to kill people, though? Someone who tries to shield him after the murder? A good and decent person?The police in America might not all think they are fascists. Certainly, not all of them are. But what is certain is that some significant number of them are captured. They are sympathetic to the forces which are now attacking democracy. They prioritize those forces over democracy, freedom, peace, justice.

Though divisive and polarizing rhetoric has long been a campaign staple for Erdogan, the ruling party’s current election campaign has featured unprecedented levels of homophobic narrative ahead of presidential and parliamentary polls on May 14.  Earlier in the day, Erdogan wrote on Twitter that LGBTQ movement is “the strongest current threatening the future of Western nations.” 

Over the past two months, Erdogan and his government officials have galvanized homophobic sentiments among their conservative voter base.Speaking at a campaign event last week, Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu went so far as to claim that LGBTQ “also includes marriage between animals and humans.” 

While Turkey is a constitutionally secular country where homosexuality has never been criminalized, discrimination and violence against LGBTQ individuals are rampant.