Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2016/07/20/brexit-is-a-victory-for-mass-s.html
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Minor correction #1: “the UK is scheduled to leave the EU in two years or less”.
That is, two years or less after some unspecified time in the future, probably next year, when Britain formally declares its intention to leave the Union. Or more than two years after that, in case Britain and the EU Council unanimously agree to extend the time limit.
Minor correction #2: It wasn’t “the EU” that ruled here. It was the European Court of Justice (ECJ). Unless you’re in the habit of referring to the Supreme Court of the United States as “the USA”, there’s a difference.
Minor correction #3: In fact, the court hasn’t ruled, either. This is the “Opinion of the Advocate General”, not the final ruling. The final ruling follows the Opinion of the Advocate General most of the time, but not always.
So when the court finally rules, Britain will probably still have a full two years of ignoring court rulings left before the exit is complete.
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Also, does anyone else suspect that they might potentially not have announced this opinion had Brexit gone the other way? Who can say, but it’s potentially just sour grapes. Snooper’s Charter’s been around a while. Brexit’s only a couple weeks old.
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Good thing the british voter won’t be bothered by those pesky protections and liberties the EU provides for much longer.
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Conservative parties are experts in phobomancy.
They can take economic fear, and transmute it into xenophobic fear, or even existential terror - the reason terrorism is their favorite tool.
They mix a potent brew of fears and use it to enrich their owners, and I’m sick of it!
I really wish people would wake up, evaluate the sources of their information, question some assumptions (and allegiances), and think think think
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No. Britain is not the center that all of Europe revolves around.
The opinion is actually about two “joint cases” before the court, one about the British Snoopers Charter and the other one about Sweden.
Those cases were referred to the court after the court invalidated the EU data retention directive. The court is now dealing with the question of whether EU rules prohibit national laws that do the same (or even more) as that invalidated directive.
“Referred to the court” means that means the British half of the case was explicitly referred by some appeals court in Britain. I see no reason why the court would not have returned an answer if Britain had stayed.
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I’m sometimes amused by the fact that our undemocratic House of Lords are often a better protector of the people of the UK from the excesses of the government than the more-or-less democratically elected House of Commons.
This may be the reason that the previous pig-fucker in chief decided that maybe he might be in favour of reforming the Lords, after they got in his way over something or other that was close enough to being financial that he could chuck out their opinion.
The fact that MPs can be deselected by the party at the next election might be some of the reason for that, but I do like to think that a few of them in “the other place” have some recollection of noblesse oblige, and of the idea that Parliament is supposed to be senior to the executive, rather than subservient.
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