JC and the EC

The Observer carries an important message for us all:

The Church of England is to urge congregations to take part in five days of prayer as Britain approaches the deadline for leaving the EU....Justin Welby told the Church of England’s General Synod: “We cannot ignore the warnings that have been proffered about the possible profound impact that the next months may possibly have on the poorest of our society....[but/and] ...If attention was not paid to the “pain and exclusion” of some parts of society revealed by Brexit, greater division and strife would result...Welby said last month that a no-deal Brexit would be “not only a political and practical failure, but a moral one”...Welby voted to remain in the EU in the 2016 referendum, but has since stressed the need for reconciliation and restraint.

Meanwhile:

John Sentamu, the archbishop of York, led the synod in a prayer asking God to “save our parliamentary democracy” and “protect the high court of parliament and all its members from partiality and prejudice”.

On other pages, an ingenious argument that the defecting MPs, of whom the Observer is quite supportive, should not do anything silly like trigger byelections:

The 12 MPs are facing calls to trigger immediate byelections. The argument is that their constituents should be given the chance to endorse or reject their new status. But the arguments against weigh stronger still. The principle of representative democracy is that voters elect MPs to represent them in the best way they see fit until the next general election. There has never been a convention that defecting MPs should trigger a byelection – indeed, the vast majority historically have not – and nor should there be [so much for mould-breaking].. Our two-party, majoritarian system is no longer representative of a fragmented electorate divided along more than one axis. Our first-past-the-post electoral system makes party realignment almost impossible even if there are significant shifts in the electorate. To set a precedent that all defecting MPs must trigger a byelection quashes any realignment before it has even begun, risking even greater public disaffection with politics.

And, in the wider scheme of thing, there is probably some deeper, truer sense of democracy that only liberals can detect:

It is not inconceivable that this small group could help alter the course of Brexit history [i.e. stop Brexit]. In which case, job done.