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Boris Johnson Wins Key Support To Become PM As Labour Leader Foils Leadership Coup
Zero Hedge ^ | 6/26/2016 | Tyler Durden

Posted on 06/26/2016 10:31:47 AM PDT by orchestra

In the middle of this transformation is none other than Boris Johnson, the leader of the successful "Leave" campaign, who however has cause to celebrate tonight because according to the Sunday Times, the former London mayor has won the backing of a key colleague to replace David Cameron as prime minister. Justice minister Michael Gove, who together with Johnson led the "Leave" campaign, called Johnson on Saturday to say he would back him for the leadership of the ruling Conservative Party, Reuters added.

The Sunday Times said interior minister Theresa May was expected to enter the leadership contest in the coming days and was likely to get support from allies of Cameron who see her as the best candidate to take on Johnson, a former London mayor.

May supported the "Remain" campaign but took a lower profile than Cameron and finance minister George Osborne, whose hopes of becoming the party's next leader took a big blow with the outcome of the referendum.

One also wonders what, if any role, Nigel Farage will hold in the new cabinet: after all, if it weren;'t for the UKIP in last year's elections, David Cameron would have never called the Referendum which has since cost him his job and the UK's presence in the EU. For him to be omitted from any key position would be a massive oversight, and significant gamble, on the part of the Conservative Party.

(Excerpt) Read more at zerohedge.com ...


TOPICS: Local News
KEYWORDS: 2016election; banzerohedge; bojo; borisjohnson; brexit; brexitwins; brixit; colinlokey; conservativeparty; conservatives; danielivandjiiski; davidcameron; election2016; europeanunion; euroskepticism; farage; georgeosborne; gove; london; michaelgove; nato; newyork; remains; theresamay; timbackshall; tories; trump; tylerdurden; tylerdurdenmyass; unitedkingdom; zerohedge
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1 posted on 06/26/2016 10:31:47 AM PDT by orchestra
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To: orchestra

Corbyn remaining as Labour leader is far more important than anything the Tories do. With Corbyn in charge, Labour will have a really difficult election.


2 posted on 06/26/2016 10:34:30 AM PDT by proxy_user
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To: orchestra

It won’t be Johnson. Farage will be shut out completely. And there is a strong chance the Brexit will never happen at all.


3 posted on 06/26/2016 10:49:48 AM PDT by montag813
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To: orchestra

Where does Boris stand on other issues? Is he similar to Trump?


4 posted on 06/26/2016 10:59:50 AM PDT by aquila48
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To: montag813

Well aren’t you quite pessimistic


5 posted on 06/26/2016 11:00:46 AM PDT by bjcoop
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To: montag813

And you base your opinion on......


6 posted on 06/26/2016 11:01:40 AM PDT by little jeremiah (Half the truth is often a great lie. B. Franklin)
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To: aquila48

I always understood that Boris was the English version of the Tea Party. People were actually talking about him running for office here in the US.


7 posted on 06/26/2016 11:13:23 AM PDT by bubbacluck (America 180)
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To: bubbacluck

I checked Wikipedia after asking the question. They have a pretty good synopsis of his political views.

He seems to have a lot of overlap with Trump - they’re both pragmatists with no strong ideologies. Boris seems a bit more liberal. Both are nationalists.


8 posted on 06/26/2016 11:21:24 AM PDT by aquila48
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To: orchestra

EU bureaucrats were meddling in such arcane issues as the shape of cucumbers. Anything not up to a certain standard had to be tossed. This is one reason why the gun laws are so strict. Bureaucrats want to live.


9 posted on 06/26/2016 11:51:32 AM PDT by BigEdLB (Take it Easy, Chuck. I'm Not Taking it Back -- Donald Trump)
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To: orchestra

Yay!!


10 posted on 06/26/2016 12:50:17 PM PDT by Albion Wilde ("We can't fix a rigged system by relying on the people who rigged it." --Donald Trump, 6/7/16)
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To: montag813

Then expect another hundred years war


11 posted on 06/26/2016 12:52:28 PM PDT by Nifster (I see puppy dogs in the clouds)
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To: montag813; naturalman1975

Permit me to copy what naturalman1975 has said about this topic. He knows whereof he speaks.

Yes, it is technically true that this vote is non-binding. But that does not mean that the government will be able to get away with not acting on it. Britain’s constitutional law is not neatly expressed in a single document - it’s spread around a variety of different places, but it does exist and at its core, it’s not that complicated.

If a British government tries to ignore this referendum result, they will be acting so far outside British constitutional convention, that the Reserve Powers of the Monarch - which are real even if they are very rarely used primarily because a government and Parliament always backs down well before there is any chance they might - will come into play. (I will discuss the nature of the Reserve Powers at the end of this message).

Let’s say this happened theoretically - that the Referendum said leave, and the government did not pass legislation.

At that point, the Queen would be justified in removing the Prime Minister from office and if necessary dismissing the entire government and appointing a new Prime Minister and government specifically on the condition they enact this legislation and then go to the polls for a general election. At that point, the legislation would almost certainly be passed.

If it still didn’t pass, the Queen would dissolve Parliament for a new election - and the people would have the power to elect a new House of Commons. It is very hard to envisage a situation in which the people would not elect a House of Commons that would pass the legislation - there would be such a level of outrage at Parliament’s ignoring a referendum result that the new Parliament would go the other way. Even many people who have voted to Remain would be so outraged by this abuse of Parliamentary power, that they would vote to put a government in place to enact the Leave legislation.

Theoretically it’s possible - realistically it isn’t. It would bring into play powers the Monarch hasn’t had to use in over 170 years - but they still exist to be used in an emergency.

The United Kingdom has had 12 referendums. All were non binding - they have to be under the principle of parliamentary sovereignty that is at the core of the British constitution (Parliament cannot be bound to any action - part of the reason some people want to leave the EU is because of a belief that EU membership could eventually violate that core principle).

Even though all twelve were non-binding, in every single case, the necessary legislation to give effect to their decision was passed. That is expected and there’s no reason to expect it to be any different this time.

The pointing out that it’s “non-binding” is a tactic being used by some people to try and influence people’s vote (in particular to try and depress the leave vote) and should not be given any real credence.

If Parliament chose to ignore the referendum result, it would trigger a major constitutional crisis that would bring down the Prime Minister, and probably the government that did it.

The most that is likely to happen is a large number (potentially as many as two thirds) of MPs abstaining from the vote to avoid having to cast a vote against their wish - leaving 250 or so to vote ‘Aye’ to the legislation needed.

[THE RESERVE POWERS

The Monarch still has a lot of power - but it can only be used in very specific circumstances and a good government avoids those circumstances arising.

They are referred to as the reserve powers.

They include:

The power to refuse to dissolve Parliament on the request of the Prime Minister. This last came close to happening in 1910, but Edward Heath specifically asked the Queen for her assurance she would grant him an election if asked as late as 1974 (when he agreed to take office as head of a minority government).

To appoint a Prime Minister of their own choosing. The Queen did this in 1963 after the conservative Prime Minister Harold Macmillan resigned from office on the grounds of ill health and it emerged that the Conservative Party had no mechanism to replace a Prime Minister who had resigned - she agreed to use her power to do so, but told them to come up with a procedure to avoid it happening again.

To refuse the Queen’s Consent to allow laws on a very limited number of subjects to be debated in Parliament. The Queen did this in 1999 (the last time she exercised any of her powers) to prevent debate on a law that would have given Parliament the power to authorise military strikes on Iraq without the Monarch’s consent - she did this at the request of the government of the day that didn’t want the change (it was proposed by a group on the extreme left of the Labour Party and was opposed by both the Labour government and the Conservative opposition so had no hope of passing and would have just wasted Parliament’s time).

There are other powers but they either haven’t been used for so long, they are considered largely dead, or they just relate to formalities that aren’t that important.

In the type of situation being discussed here - if a government ignored a referendum, the Queen’s right to appoint a Prime Minister of her own choosing and/or to dismiss a government from office and call a general election would become relevant as the Queen would be entitled to act to ensure Parliament respected the will of the people.

While no Monarch has had to do anything like this in the UK since 1834, it has been done by the Queen’s representative in Her overseas Realms - it happened in Australia in 1975 when the Governor-General Sir John Kerr, dismissed Prime Minister Gough Whitlam and his entire government from office, after Whitlam could not present a legal plan to continue governing without a budget, and refused to ask for an election. The powers are real - but a competent government would not make the Queen use them.

If you go back to the British election of 2010 which resulted in a hung Parliament, you might remember that there was a period in which Prime Minister Gordon Brown was trying to stay in office by making a deal with the Liberal Democrats. When he finally gave up, he is known to have told the Liberal Democrat leader that the Queen had made it clear he’d run out of time - she’d given him the chance to make a deal if he could, but in the end, while she didn’t step in, she told him that he knew what decision he had to make. And being a good Prime Minister who respected the way things are, he did the right thing, rather than force her to intervene. It’s very unlikely any Prime Minister will ever force the issue.

(The fundamental control on the Queen’s powers is that the last time a Monarch abused them and went too far, he had his head chopped off - the Monarch understands that the British people will only accept the use of these powers to protect the Constitutional integrity of the United Kingdom and abusing them would bring down the Monarch and possibly the entire Monarchy. But the powers are there for resolve an actual constitutional crisis.)


12 posted on 06/26/2016 12:58:32 PM PDT by little jeremiah (Half the truth is often a great lie. B. Franklin)
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To: little jeremiah; naturalman1975

Thanks j ! Thanks Mr. Natural !!!


13 posted on 06/26/2016 1:18:09 PM PDT by onona (Honey this isn't Kindergarten. We are in an all out war for the survival of our Country !)
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To: BigEdLB

I am not up to date with the shape of cucumbers, but the previous joke was the EU regulating how bendy the bananas can be.

A charismatic comedian can paint a picture of an EU drone in Brussels spending sleepless nights worrying about what way the bananas Europeans put into their mouths bend, but the real reason for this regulation was much simpler - good old protectionism.

France, Spain, UK and other European countries either control or have significant interest in banana production and distribution. Their bananas have different bend than Latin American ones and the regulation (now long scrapped) was to put Latin American bananas into disadvantage in European market.

There was a method to what is described as madness.


14 posted on 06/26/2016 1:27:38 PM PDT by Krosan
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To: Krosan

Actually the article I read also discussed Bananas


15 posted on 06/26/2016 3:20:44 PM PDT by BigEdLB (Take it Easy, Chuck. I'm Not Taking it Back -- Donald Trump)
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To: Krosan

Bananas in Europe come from Africa, but taste the same


16 posted on 06/26/2016 3:22:06 PM PDT by BigEdLB (Take it Easy, Chuck. I'm Not Taking it Back -- Donald Trump)
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To: orchestra; flaglady47; pax_et_bonum; seekthetruth; ExTexasRedhead; Maine Mariner; Bob Ireland
To cut to the chase (without the Queen interceding-thing or other side-plays)......when Cameron resigns in October is there a general election or do both Houses of Parliament vote on (appoint) a successor to the post of Prime Minister?

Leni

17 posted on 06/26/2016 3:33:26 PM PDT by MinuteGal ( GO, TRUMP, GO !!!....Plus....Boycott Target !!!)
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To: BigEdLB
I think the Banana case was more than 15 years ago and rival banana producers sued the EU and won.

This is where the UK imported Bananas in 1999:

And this is 2014:


18 posted on 06/26/2016 3:43:33 PM PDT by Krosan
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To: MinuteGal
To cut to the chase (without the Queen interceding-thing or other side-plays)......when Cameron resigns in October is there a general election or do both Houses of Parliament vote on (appoint) a successor to the post of Prime Minister?

The Conservative Party will elect a new leader and as the Conservative Party cotrols the House of Commons, he will become Prime Minister.

Technically speaking, the Prime Minister is elected by the House of Commons, but because it is assumed that the dominant party will elect their own leader and they have the numbers to do so, in practice, a vote is not called in the House of Commons. The Opposition have every right to call for a vote of no confidence to test the issue if they want to, but won't under normal circumstances.

19 posted on 06/26/2016 3:54:45 PM PDT by naturalman1975 ("America was under attack. Australia was immediately there to help." - John Winston Howard)
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To: naturalman1975; little jeremiah

It seems to me that the defeat of the government in the referendum is sort of a vote of no confidence in the government.

In addition to an up or down, “Resolved, this House have no confidence in Her Majesty’s government”, there are other motions which are “no confidence” equivalents, the budget, for example.

How is this not such a situation? Please discuss.


20 posted on 06/26/2016 4:02:23 PM PDT by Jim Noble (The polls can have a strong influence on the weak-minded)
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