Advocate General chaos

The UK Government’s chief legal appointee to Scotland, the Advocate General, Lord Keen, tendered his resignation yesterday. It took six painful hours for this to be confirmed by Johnson.

As DAG pointed out, in legal terms:

“This government has now been sacked as a client by both the Treasury Solicitor and the Advocate General”

In his resignation letter, Lord Keen wrote: “faces challenges on a number of fronts and I fear that the internal market bill in its present form will not make these any easier".

He added: "Over the past week I have found it increasingly difficult to reconcile what I consider to be my obligations as a law officer with your policy intentions with respect to the Internal Markets Bill.

"I have endeavoured to identify a respectable argument for the provisions at clauses 42 to 45 of the bill, but it is now clear that this will not meet your policy intentions.

"In these circumstances I consider that it is my duty to tender my resignation from your government."

Earlier, the Northern Ireland Minister, Brandon Lewis, confirmed and so corrected the record after Lord Keen had suggested Lewis had answered the wrong question, by clarifying that he had been reading from a script prepared by the Attorney General. And the over the weekend the Home Secretary, stated in a TV interview, that no international law would be broken.

Chaos?

It is likely that as long as breaking international law is Government policy, no member of the Scottish bar would accept the position of Advocate General.

An amendment by Tory backbencher, Bob Neill, will only allow international law breaking after a vote on the Commons. It matters not a jot under international law how the law breaking was decided, breaking the law is breaking the law. Just spreads the blame a bit.

In a Select Committee, the Northern Ireland Secretary (again), could offer no assurances that the UK would abide by any judgements of either the Joint Committee or the UCJ as detailed in both the WA and WAB. This is really shameful stuff.

And even odder is the fact that the State Aid clauses in the WA that the UK so objects to are replicated, largely, in the proposed trade agreement with Japan. It seems the problem is not the clause, just that it is with the EU.

Meanwhile, US Presidential Candidate, Joe Biden, affirmed that if any action by the UK Government threatened the GFA or reimposed a hard border on Ireland, ther would be no trade deal between the US and UK.

All going well, then.

And finally, the EU have announced there will be no more talks until the threat to break international law has been removed.

Peachy.