Your lyin' ayes

Last night, at about twenty to ten, the Internal Market Bill passed its second reading in the COmmons and now goes to committee stage, where amendments and the such might be added and discussed.

But the damage has been done.

The House of Commons has voted to give the Government the power to break or ignore domestic and international law.

This from the so-called party of law and order.

It is a day that shames the long history of the Conservative and Union Party, but also shames this country. The damage to our reputation will take decades to heal, if it ever does.

29 Tory MPs abstained rather than vote against their party on the rule of law. Some might change they mind on the 3rd reading, but there is likely to be some mealy worded ammendment that gives the apprearance of a safeguard or a vote.

Ministers, under the terms of the bill, could just ignore that.

This bill, in a wide range of policy areas, bypasses Parliament for oversight, scrutiny and instead creates an enabling law, and yes I know the hostoric connotation​s of that, this is the first and most significant step to an illiberal country. We have already seen the PM and Ministers turn on the Judiciary, the BBC and soon it will be areas of the press that don't tow the Government line.

We have seen what happens in countries like Hungary and Poland, and there is supposed to be EU laws to protect things like an independent legal system. We won't even have that. In fact the next item on the Home Secretay's agenda is the Human Rights Act.

There is little hope of the IMB being stopped. It is possible that the bill itself breaks international law, not the act of enacting one of its clauses.

To end:

1. The WA is what Boris Johnson negotiated.

2. In particular, the NI Protocol, which was the only major change from May's

3. He campaigned through a General Election to "get Brexit done", by enacting his negotiated WA.

4. MPs had to swear to vote for the WA in the WAB if elected.

5. Johnson won an 80 seat majority on a ticket to enact his WA.

6. The current UK Parliament passed the WAB on January 9th 2020, thus ratifying it. They decided they only needed three days to debate it, as they all knew it's content.

7. Johnson signed it into law on the 24th January 2020.

8. Conservative MPs had a three line whip and were threatened with expulsion from the Parliamentary Party if they voted against the Bill they swore to implement.

9. The Conservative Government have voted to break the very WA they were elected on, and given the madate for, in the 2019 election.

10. Had Johnson voted against his deal in January, he would have been expelled from the party.

Madness.

Labour and the other parties voted against the Government for the UK to honour it's international commitments.

This is what the hostorial record will show.