Addicted

Once a Government found it could legislate by Statutory Instrument (SI), then it would find it difficult to go back to the slow, boring way of getting it through both Houses.

An SI can be created and made into law by the stroke of a Minister's pen, no questions asked, no debate, no scrutiny.

There just needs to be some emergency to be used to justify the SI.

Although the is a global pandemic, and by most measures, the UK is doing worse than most other European and leading industrialised nations, Parliament is sitting, it has been known for nine months that the transition period was to end on New Year's Eve, and yet an SI was created yesterday, the Government granting itself powers to build lorry parks in many counties and cities, bypassing local laws, objections and appeals.

We should not be surprised.

On one hand.

And yet, Brexit was all about restoring sovereignty to Westminster, and yet this Government and these Ministers do everything they can to bypass it.

The impending clusterfuck that is cross-border trade has long been warned about, but not doing anything about, or they alarm those who were persuaded by Vote Leave lies, means that a serious issue has become a critical one. In leaving the EU's SM and CU, a regulatory border was going to be created somewhere, the decision was where that was going to be. One was clearly down the middle of the English Channel and North Sea, but the other one was either going to be across the island of Ireland or in the Irish Sea.

The former would have serious implications to the Good Friday Agreement (GFA) and the All Ireland Trade, this was the deal that May chose, as the latter would have meant splitting the Union of the United Kingdom up. It is odd then that this second option was Johnson's deal: the Northern Ireland protocol kicks in if there is and isn't a trade deal, the UK spit asunder in relation to trade. Tesco, in supplying stores in NI will have to fill out customs declarations, for every item of stock, and rules of origin check, and compliance to EU regulations.

This is the oven ready deal. Or the reality of it.

No wonder Brexiteers and Ministers want to change the WA. But they can't.

The SI to build lorry parks will override environmental laws, concerns and objections of local people. It will not be the last time SI will be used by this Government, more rights being burned, as the Executive rules by diktat, and Parliament looks on, twiddling its fingers, castrated of power.

But this is the reality of taking back control, putting power in the hands of the few, some unelected in Whitehall, with no rights for us to challenge.