Utopia, you are standing in it!

Boris Johnson’s time in Downing Street appears to be in its final days, but how it will end remains unclear. Robert Hazell examines the possibilities. How long will a leadership election take? Could there be a caretaker Prime Minister? What happens if Johnson tries to call a snap general election?

If Boris Johnson loses the confidence vote among Conservative MPs, he is not able to stand again. Any other Conservative MP can stand for the party leadership. How long it will take for the party to elect a new leader will depend on the number of candidates standing, and whether the vote goes to a second stage ballot of all party members. Party rules prescribe that Conservative MPs vote initially in a series of ballots to select two candidates, who then go forward to a postal ballot of all party members for the final decision. In 2005 it took two…

The Constitution Unit has today published a new discussion paper entitled Northern Ireland’s political future: Challenges after the Assembly elections. Here the author, Alan Whysall, Honorary Senior Research Associate at the Unit, introduces it. A further paper on longer-term prospects for Northern Ireland will be published later this year.

Northern Ireland voted for a new Assembly yesterday; the results will emerge over the coming hours and days. Thereafter, talks will begin on the formation of a new Executive. What happens in these negotiations matters profoundly for the future of Northern Ireland. It should also be of great concern to ministers in London. The future of the power-sharing arrangements that have brought stability to Northern Ireland for almost a quarter of a century may be at stake.

In current difficulties, there is also the potential to bring about change for the better. The paper explores what renewal of the…

From the Emperor’s Desk: This is the information I discovered.

The Treaty of Union and the subsequent Acts of Union state that England and Scotland were to be “United into One Kingdom by the Name of Great Britain”, and as such “Great Britain” was the official name of the state, as well as being used in titles such as “Parliament of Great Britain”.

The websites of the Scottish Parliament, the BBC, and others, including the Historical Association, refer to the state created on May 1, 1707 as the United Kingdom of Great Britain. Both the Acts and the Treaty describe the country as “One Kingdom” and a “United Kingdom”, leading some publications to treat the state as the “United Kingdom”. The term United Kingdom was sometimes used during the 18th century to describe the state.

Kingdoms

The Acts of Union 1800 were parallel acts of the Parliament of Great Britain…

Anyone with the temerity to tip a bucket on the subsidised wind and solar scam is soon removed from the public square by Big Tech, their online personas “vaporized” and their writings relegated to the “memory hole”.

George Orwell conjured up his nightmare world of malicious bureaucrats engaged in pernicious mind control in his novel, 1984.

At the time 1984 hit bookshelves in 1949, it was largely taken as a warning; directed at avoiding a future dominated by a malign few, at the expense of a pliant and gullible many. As the Iron Curtin descended across Europe, many took it as an analogue of the “how to” manual used by the Iron-Fisted, Communist regimes that ran the Soviet Bloc.

These days – as the great “Greenblob” (just the latest tribe of Neo-Marxists hell-bent on destroying free-market democracy from within) infects every aspect of political life and…

Alan Whysall was a panellist in the session on Northern Ireland at the Unit’s State of the Constitution conference on 23 June. This revision of his talk draws on his paper for the Unit on Northern Ireland’s Political Future, and its accompanying blogpost. He argues that stable power-sharing can only return through good faith inclusive negotiation – which is not a part of London’s current approach – and a reinforcement of the foundations of the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement.

It is essential to bring all the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement institutions back as soon as possible: that unlocks the potential for political progress. Without the institutions, polarisation grows; the longer they are away, the harder ultimately the Agreement settlement is to sustain. And there is no alternative as a framework for the stable government of Northern Ireland.

Devolution still has wide popular support and the political class has a strong…

(And other economics agencies of government, but the Reserve Bank should be the highest priority given the extent of the decline and the substantive importance/powers of the institution.)

On Friday my post focused on the (severe) limitations of the members of the new Reserve Bank Board. Together, they look as though they would be a well-qualified (perhaps a touch over-qualified) group for the board of trustees at a high-decile high school……but this is the central bank and prudential regulator.

I had a couple of responses suggesting that, if anything, I was pulling my punches, understating the severity of the situation, when it came to the Reserve Bank. One person, who preferred to remain nameless (having high level associations with entities the Bank regulates), indicated that I was free to use their comments provided it was without attribution. These were the comments:

The situation is parlous: inept, multi-focussed but wrong focus…

The relationship between the Scotland Act 1998 (“the SA”), Convention rights and the Human Rights Act 1998 (“the HRA”) is well known.

Convention rights are embedded in the Scottish constitution. The Scottish Parliament cannot legislate, and Scottish Ministers cannot act, in any way which is incompatible with those rights (SA ss. 29(2)(d), 53,54,57(2)).

The SA is largely independent of the HRA.

Questions whether provisions in an Act of the Scottish Parliament are incompatible, or Scottish Ministers have acted incompatibly, with Convention rights are usually determined by proceedings under the SA but they can also be determined under the HRA. (Somerville v The Scottish Ministers[2007] UKHL 44: and my article ‘Remedies under the Scotland Act: Implications ofSomerville’ 2007 SLT, 40, 289-294).

There are now similar provisions in both Acts regarding, title and interest, time limits and damages (SA ss. 100(1),(3), (3B) and HRA ss 7(1) (5) and…

The other day I got into a debate on the internet about the name of the Kingdom after the passing of the Act of Union of 1707 which united England and Scotland.

I was under the impression that this new Kingdom was simply called “Great Britain” or the “Kingdom of Great Britain” and Queen Anne’s title becoming “Queen of Great Britain and Ireland.”

Anne, Queen of Great Britain and Ireland

At the time Ireland was not joined to Great Britain but was in personal union with the sovereign and didn’t politically join Great Britain until the Act of Union of 1801. Therefore in 1801 the country then became known as “The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland” and the sovereigns title reflected that change.

Now my internet debating friend insisted that the name of the kingdom after the Act of Union of 1707 became ” The United Kingdom of…