THE COURT of Session has rejected a plea to force Boris Johnson to request a Brexit extension.
Lord Pentland said the government’s “unequivocal assurances” that the Prime Minister would comply with the Benn Act meant it was “not necessary for the court to grant the order sought”.
The case had been brought the SNP’s Joanna Cherry, anti-Brexit campaigner Jolyon Maugham, and businessman Dale Vince.
The legal action launched at the Outer House of the court sought to create an order which would make Johnson follow the new anti-no-deal legislation passed by MPs last month.
That law compels the government to write to Brussels to ask for an extension to the Brexit negotiations if no deal is reached by the end of the European Council summit on October 18.
But the Prime Minister has repeatedly said he won’t ask for an extension and that the UK will be leaving the EU on October 31.
In an interview with the BBC on 16 September 2019, Johnson said: “We’re going to come out on 31 October and it’s vital that people understand that the UK will not extend. We won’t go on remaining in the EU beyond October. What on earth is the point? Do you know how much it costs?”
Cherry, Maugham and Vince wanted the Outer House to make Johnson send the letter and to stop him from frustrating the Act's purpose.
In his opinion, Lord Pentland said Johnson’s repeated denials that he would never extend the Brexit deadline needed to be “understood in the political context in which they were made”.
“That is as expressions of the government’s political policy. They were clearly not intended to be taken as conclusive statements of the government’s understanding of its legal obligations,” he added.
The government, in their response to this had, he said, accepted “that in executing its political policy it must comply with the 2019 Act.”
Pentland said that this meant there was “no need for coercive orders against” the government or the Prime Minister.
But the judge also sent a stark warning to Number 10, saying it would “be destructive of one of the core principles of constitutional propriety and of the mutual trust that is the bedrock of the relationship between the court and the Crown for the Prime Minister or the government to renege on what they have assured the court that the Prime Minister intends to do.”
The three have said they will appeal.
Taking to Twitter, Maugham said: “I would rather live in the world the Court believes continues to exist. But I doubt we do.”
He added: “As we have extracted promises from the Govt, the question whether this loss matters depends on whether you think I am right or the Court is right. But, on any view, there are now risks of an unlawful Brexit that would not, had the decision gone the other way, have existed.
“I expect the Inner House of the Court of Session tomorrow to hear our appeal”.
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