A CROSS-PARTY group of MPs and lords is to ask the Court of Session in Edinburgh to overturn Boris Johnson’s plans to suspend Parliament.
It’s expected that the case, backed by 70 Remain-supporting MPs, will be heard today or tomorrow.
The parliamentarians had lodged the legal action at the country’s top civil court last month, and a substantive hearing in the case is scheduled for next Friday, but yesterday’s events forced the petitioners to call for the process to be speeded up.
The SNP MP Joanna Cherry is the lead petitioner on the case. She told The National that as the Queen had already published the order calling for Parliament to be prorogued, the politicians would be asking the court for a suspension rather than an interdict.
“This argument by Boris Jonson that suspending parliament is normal behaviour and nothing to do with Brexit is ridiculous,” she said.
“We all know that the only game in town in British politics just now is whether or not we crash out of the Europe Union with no deal on 31 October.”
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The petitioners argue that a No-Deal Brexit is illegal because it does not have approval of MPs.
A No10 source told ITV’s Robert Peston that their lawyers were “absolutely confident the courts cannot interfere with a bog standard Queen’s Speech process”.
They added: “No 10 has been extremely careful to do everything by the book in the normal way and there’s no precedent for the courts having any locus on this.
“This process is ancient, so there is no scope for legislation or judicial review.”
Cherry said that while Downing Street may be confident of their legal position, government lawyers aren’t always right.
“It’s worth remembering that they said that in the Wightman case, we beat them in that, and also they said it in the Miller case, and Gina Miller won that.”
She added: “If our legal action isn’t successful, that will mean that the court has said that what Boris Johnson has done is lawful.
“Is that what you would expect in a democracy? That a Prime Minister can get away with suspending Parliament to stop it from preventing him doing something?
“That’s not very democratic. If our legal case suffers a defeat it just shows broken the British constitution is.”
She added: “If he gets away with this it simply underlines the case that Scotland should break free of this undemocratic union and become an independent country in a democratic union like the European Union.”
The case was brought in Scotland because the Court of Session sits over summer. The equivalent court in England was on holiday.
Former Prime Minister John Major is also considering taking legal action against the Prime Minister.
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