Firstly, my commiserations to the Marine Corps and the families of Major Matthew Wiegand and Captain Travis Bannon over the tragic helo accident near Yuma, Arizona on Saturday. The Corps has clearly lost two fine men. May’s deal is like a zombie – it keeps trying to come back from the dead, with bits dropping off each time it does. Like a zombie, however, it’s still dead! The majority on Friday was smaller than the last time, but the shameful deal was still rejected. There is mad talk in London of bringing it back for a fourth time, in defiance of the Speaker, but it may not happen. Britain is still on course to leave the Evil Empire without a deal, although the thoroughly offensive and seriously defective bill sponsored by Cabinet Office stooge (no offense intended) Yvette Cooper may delay it for months, causing huge resentment and frustration in the process.
Leaving without a deal is still the default position in law. The EU has granted an extension of UK membership until May 22nd if the Withdrawal Agreement is ratified by the House of Commons, April 12th if not. After the deal was thrown out for a third time the UK was scheduled to finally break free from the stranglehold of the Evil Empire on April 12th at 2300 hours British Summer Time. Subject to existing legal challenges the EU (Withdrawal)(No 5) Bill, which is likely to become law next week, will almost certainly mean Britain participating, absurdly, in the next European Parliament elections. Cooper’s mad bill is causing chaos, as she no doubt intended.
Not leaving on March 29th was an utter humiliation for Theresa May. For over two years she has spouted the “Brexit Means Brexit” mantra, very obviously without meaning a word of it. She’s totally opposed to leaving the EU. Part of the idea of the Withdrawal Agreement was to track EU rules with a view to re-entering when political conditions allow, destroying sterling in the process, since new applicants to the EU have to sign up to the euro. The Cabinet Office of course are desperate to wreck the currency and make Britain a German vassal state.
Since it was set up in 1916 by the Imperial German Secret Service, with their man Maurice Hankey, a loathsome pedophile, in charge, the Cabinet Office has been run by a series of political criminals. The last Cabinet Secretary, murderous Euronutter Jeremy ‘von’ Heywood, signed off on GO2’s shameful plan to assassinate Labour MP Jo Cox, in a desperate effort to shore up the Remain vote ahead of the 2016 referendum.
Although widely seen as part of the British government, the Cabinet Office in practice is part of the German government, even if the food on offer in the canteen isn’t exactly German. This explains the tensions in Westminster. Theresa May is a house-trained idiot, no offense intended, and reports to the Cabinet Secretary, not the Queen or Parliament. The arrangement is as unworkable as it’s unconstitutional. America had a similar problem when the German spies George Bush Senior and Barack Hussein Obama were in the White House.
The Withdrawal Agreement is permanent
The majority against ‘May’s deal’ (in practice it’s Merkel’s deal, of course, dictated to Britain by Germany) was lower last time around because May promised to resign if it was approved. Since she’s going anyway it wasn’t much of a sacrifice – it’s a bit like a suicide bomber catching an earlier train. It was also strongly hinted that the hated ‘Oily’ Robbins, the Cabinet Office’s chief negotiator, would get the chop, albeit not literally (not yet, anyway).
The problem with that of course is that ‘Oily’s’ work is already done. The Withdrawal Agreement isn’t temporary, it’s permanent. The key German demand is that Britain couldn’t withdraw from it unless a panel of arbitrators agreed. Since the arbitrators would be reporting to Berlin (sadly, there is no longer such a thing as international justice in good faith) the only way out would be war. Had the deal gone through we would probably have seen another major Anglo-European war before the decade was out.
Like naïve young Vietnamese and Indonesian women accepting VX nerve agent from North Koreans thinking it was only intended to irritate, some Tory Brexiteers bought into the idea that there is going to be a ‘second phase’ of negotiations. Apart from a fake series of meetings there won’t be. It therefore doesn’t matter who conducts from them from the British side. It would be a bit like changing Leyton Orient’s coach in the hope that they could get into and then win the Premier League. The person in charge would be bound to fail, indeed Leyton Orient have a better chance of winning the League next year than the new Tory PM would have of negotiating a decent free trade deal.
With the May/Merkel deal looking as doomed as the Munich Agreement (which if anything was a better deal) the PM, in desperation, turned to Labour’s Marxist leader Jeremy Corbyn. May’s cunning plan was to do an end run around Tory backbench Brexiteers. She might have been better off asking Nicholas Maduro for help. (She and Maduro would probably get on well together, since they share a similar contempt for democracy – each regards the people of their respective countries as peons, to whom things are done, not people with rights for whom things are done.)
If anyone in America has a spare copy of the Gettysburg Address could they please send it to Number 10? Mrs May would benefit from reading it, although it might take a few reads before President Lincoln’s points sink in. (I should explain that unlike President Trump, with respect, our Prime Minister is a bit slow on the uptake.)
The Legal Challenges
The European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 specified March 29th at 2300 hours GMT as Exit Day. Possibly without having consulted the Attorney-General, who is a remarkably good lawyer with respect, for an Attorney-General, the government, strangely, failed to get Parliamentary authorisation for the proposed Article 50 extension. They also used a Henry VIII power in the 2018 Act to purportedly extend the operation of the European Communities Act 1972 beyond Exit Day.
I’m limited in what I can say, as I have been consulted over one of the two legal challenges currently under way. However both the extension to the Article 50 period and the extension of the hated European Communities Act without an Act of Parliament raise significant legal issues.
The English Democrats have commenced judicial review proceedings against the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union. A group of requested persons under European Arrest Warrants have separately applied for the warrants to be quashed, on the ground that they expired on Friday, i.e. Exit Day.
I should explain that under the rule in Attorney-General v. De Keyser’s Royal Hotel Ltd [1920] AC 508 the Royal Prerogative has no application in an area regulated by statute. As a result of Gina Miller’s legal challenge to Brexit, backed by George Soros, (R (on the application of Miller and Dos Santos) v. Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union [2017] UKSC 5) service of the Article 50 notice required statutory authority. It follows that Article 50 is now an area governed by statute and Prerogative powers cease to apply. Whoops, as we constitutional lawyers say.
The background to the De Keyser case is well-known. In 1914 our community partner the Kaiser decided to start World War 1. It became necessary to greatly expand the Royal Flying Corps and the Secretary of State for War, purportedly using the Royal Prerogative, requisitioned the Royal Hotel at Blackfriars, London, in 1916. No one disputed the vital need of the RFC for more headquarters facilities. Without them the urgent work of killing Huns might have been held up.
After our community partners the German Air Force (Deutsche Luftstreiträfte) had been defeated the issue arose of how to compensate the owners of the hotel. In a landmark constitutional test case, the House of Lords decided that the Prerogative had no application. That is because the power to requisition land had been placed on a statutory footing in 1914. The Royal Prerogative had therefore gone into abeyance.
The EU’s population
In an astonishing interview on the BBC Radio Four’s flagship current affairs program, Today, on Monday morning, the Europhile MP and Bilderberger, Kenneth ‘von’ Clarke, asserted that the EU’s internal market contained “500 million people”. As usual he wasn’t challenged – the BBC campaigned to Remain in 2016 and has long seen itself as a pro-EU propaganda organ.
The population of the EU 27 is in fact only 446 million. In order to get past 500 million you have to include the population of the UK! This is absurd, but is typical of the way in which the alleged attractions of the EU as a market are overstated by Euronutters. Not once since 2016 have I heard a Remain politician acknowledge that the official export figures to the EU are rigged by counting all exports via Antwerp and Rotterdam as exports to Belgium and Holland, even if they’re headed to South Korea. Mind you, if Ken Clarke thinks that Britain is in Europe he probably thinks that South Korea is as well! If they are any Democrats reading this, by the way, South Korea is in East Asia and Britain is off the coast of Europe.
John Major’s interview
John Major, the nasty, pro-European beneficiary of the internal party coup against my old friend Margaret Thatcher, who infamously described Eurosceptic Tory MPs as “bastards”, called for a government of national unity on the Andrew Marr Show on Sunday morning. Very frankly the idea is absurd. Grand coalitions in peacetime are a German thing, designed to disenfranchise voters.
Major, like Lord Heseltine, continues to labor under the delusional belief that the EU was set up to bring peace to Europe. Peace in Europe was nothing to do with the EU. It came about because the Allies defeated our community partners the Nazis. The EU came later. Peace was maintained because of NATO and the Anglo-American alliance.
The brainchild of Reichsminister Funk, the idea of the EEC was to allow Germany to dominate Europe without having to conquer it, conquest having been tried and failed. Only in that sense is the EU an alternative to war. Since the DVD’s Helmut Kohl granted the UK an opt-out from the single currency in exchange for Foreign Office support for the breakup of Yugoslavia, and since Kohl’s policy led to the Balkan wars of the 1990s, it is historically illiterate to say that Europe has been at peace since the formation of the EEC in 1958. Again for the benefit of any Democrats reading this, the Balkans are in Europe. (Ken Clarke probably thinks they’re in Africa!)
Major also wants to ‘bring the country together’. This sounds very odd coming from the man who rammed through the Maastricht Treaty. The pro-EU lobby have never shown the slightest interest in national unity. From the very beginning the EU has been forced down our throats. When we rejected membership in the 1975 referendum our votes weren’t counted – the Cabinet Office simply rigged the result.
The petition
The media were much exercised by a silly petition organised by the Bad Guys, calling for Article 50 to be revoked. This allegedly attracted six million ‘signatures’. What the media conveniently overlooked is the fact that no one checked the signatures. It could have been three million people voting twice, or two million people voting three times. Moreover many of the signatories might have been European, indeed they might not even have been resident in Britain. Even if they were on the electoral roll for European Parliament elections they had no business signing a petition calling on Parliament to dishonor the promises made to the British electorate during the 2016 referendum.
Similar game playing was in evidence over last Saturday’s march. This seemed to have attracted only about 300,000 marchers. The media said a million, but you should always divide a media figure for pro-EU demos by at least a third. Again, many of the marchers were Europeans living in Britain. If anything the lower turnout compared to the last demo, and the numbers of Europeans taking part, suggested that support for EU membership amongst the British continues to wane.
State Trials
There was some confusion amongst readers over my comments about prosecuting key supporters of the May/Merkel deal. I was not suggesting that they be tried for treason. High treason is a statutory offense and in order to be guilty you have to be caught by one of the statutory categories. Signing a treaty, however much against the British interest it might be, is not treason, not in the criminal sense at any rate. Neville Chamberlain wasn’t guilty of treason at Munich, although he went on to commit high treason the following year, when he agreed Britain’s war strategy with Admiral Canaris, via intermediaries in Dublin.
If Parliament wishes to execute say Theresa May, the Cabinet Secretary and ‘Oily’ Robbins the way to do it would be to try them as Enemies of the State via an Act of Attainder. Since it’s primary legislation you simply define the offense in the bill – supporting the Withdrawal Agreement would be quite sufficient.
The mode of execution is decapitation by axe, the usual venue being the Tower of London. It would be done nicely, of course – a padre would be laid on, they would get a slap-up breakfast on the final morning and there would be fresh straw in the dungeons. It is entirely a matter for the Queen in Parliament, of course, as to who if anyone is going to be executed as a result of the Withdrawal Agreement. Obviously there are other potential candidates for an appointment with the State Executioner (who would probably be a retired NCO from the SAS with valuable experience of killing people), including Labour’s Yvette Cooper and Sir Keir Starmer, which would make it a cross-party affair.
Of course I am not calling for the execution of the Prime Minister, the Cabinet Secretary and ‘Oily’ Robbins. I am merely saying, as a constitutional lawyer, that their execution after a State Trial would be within the range of reasonable responses open to Parliament. When we constitutional lawyers say that ‘heads must roll’, like the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia we mean actual heads into actual baskets.
If there were to be State Executions they would be a great spectacle and huge fun, except for those being executed of course, but then they’re not meant to enjoy it. There would be no end of crimes against the State if executions were enjoyable. The cost of the scaffold, the executioners’ fees (an executioner and two assistants) and the new axes (you want them nice and shiny) would be more than recouped through selling the television rights. (No doubt the TV coverage would have to be marked ‘Parental Guidance’.)
If the Prime Minister, Cabinet Secretary and ‘Oily’ Robbins are arraigned at the Bar of Parliament on capital charges, not a matter for me, I would respectfully advise a stronger defense than saying that they did not feel like being executed, or that they did not approve of capital punishment. That’s just what Anne Boleyn said. Incidentally, if Theresa May were to be executed as an Enemy of the State she would be the first woman to be beheaded in England since Mary Queen of Scots. It would be her final contribution to gender equality.
‘Von’ Mueller’s report
The Democrats are reeling from the conclusions in Robert ‘von’ Mueller’s report. Since the whole thing was a conspiracy theory from beginning to end they shouldn’t be upset.
To repeat, there was no Russian interference in the 2016 election, no emails were hacked and nobody met with any ‘Kremlin’ lawyers. Mueller’s ‘investigation’ was conducted in bad faith, with party political fervor, and the President with respect should pardon those who were convicted, in each case of auxiliary or tangential allegations only. The prosecutions were political and a shameful abuse of process.
The power of presidential pardon is a vital constitutional safeguard against corrupt or overzealous prosecutors. It is an important corrective to a malfunctioning legal system, which like Britain’s, sadly, is broke, for the same reason – judges playing politics.
My Case
Talking about dodgy political prosecutions, Mrs Justice Jefford DBE is handing down judgment in the High Court in Cardiff on Monday in my appeal against disbarment by a Bar Disciplinary Tribunal. It is entirely a matter for the learned judge, with respect, but I was given a very fair hearing in January, and shown great courtesy, which I hope I reciprocated.
Shane Rimmer (1929 – 2019) and Tania Mallett (1941 – 2019)
This week has sadly seen the passing of two fine Bond actors, Canadian Shane Rimmer (You Only Live Twice, Diamonds Are Forever, Live and Let Die, all uncredited, and The Spy Who Loved Me) and Brit Tania Mallet, who memorably played Tilly Masterton in Goldfinger. Shane Rimmer, famously, was also the voice of Scott Tracy in Thunderbirds.
Each was underrated in their lifetime. Shane Rimmer, unfairly, was seen as a minor actor, which rather ignored his considerable talents. He had a wonderful, distinctive voice. Tania Mallet never acted again after Goldfinger, which was a great loss to the movies.
Neither will be forgotten. The Bond films in which they starred will still be played centuries from now. More than mere stories, they are classics which will surely stand the test of time, partly because they teach eternal truths about the danger of power-mad maniacs. May Shane and Tania Rest in Peace.
Michael Shrimpton was a barrister from his call to the Bar in London in 1983 until being disbarred in 2019 over a fraudulently obtained conviction. He is a specialist in National Security and Constitutional Law, Strategic Intelligence and Counter-terrorism. He is a former Adjunct Professor of Intelligence Studies at the American Military University.
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