Pay dirt for lawyers as legitimation crisis deepens

The Bill requiring Johnson to seek an extension if he fails to produce a deal or loses any subsequent vote for no deal has cleared Parliament and awaits royal consent. Rumours now swirl that Johnson will refuse to obey this instruction. Will he be jailed if he refuses?

The Observer thinks so:

The conclusions of a team of leading QCs, which have been sent to the shadow Brexit secretary, Keir Starmer, make clear that the prime minister would be declared in contempt of court if he tried to remain in No 10 while refusing to obey legislation to prevent the UK leaving the EU without a deal on 31 October.... Dominic Grieve, who helped draw up the new law, said: “Unless a new withdrawal agreement materialises at the EU summit ending on 18 October, the government must apply for the extension the next day...“If necessary, a court order can be applied for to require the prime minister to do so. At that point, if he refused he would be in contempt of court and could be sent to prison.”

Downing Street said Johnson remained defiant and would neither resign, nor comply with the law to delay Brexit.

The Observer reported the Downing Street reaction after the textual shifter:'On Saturday, as violence over Brexit broke out near parliament'

The Sunday Times [subscription],however, suggests:

Boris Johnson plans to “sabotage” efforts by MPs to block Brexit, and force an explosive showdown at the Supreme Court ...No 10 believes that its approach will guarantee an emergency judicial review by the Supreme Court in the week of October 21, with judges deciding the fate of Brexit and the government.... Cummings has told colleagues that unless remainers can seize control of parliament again and pass a law revoking article 50 between October 21 and 31, they will have to ask the Supreme Court for a court order to try to force Johnson’s hand. No 10 believes it will be hard for the Supreme Court to act fast enough in the 10-day window....Whitehall mandarins have also begun work on a plan B, preparing for the prime minister to announce his resignation. Civil servants are drawing up a blueprint for how the announcement would be made and how Jeremy Corbyn — or a politician enjoying cross-party support — would then be invited to form a government.

 Which should put the cat nicely among the pigeons. And

Cummings has told officials in No 10: “The more hysterical remainers become with a campaign to arrest the PM unless he surrenders, the stronger our position with the country will get. Most MPs do not understand how much the country hates parliament and wants someone to sort out this mess.”...Crucially, the [recent YouGov] survey found support for his strategy of pitching the people against parliament; 35% of voters say they want “important issues” to be decided by the public in referendums, compared to 33% who are content for decisions to be made by MPs.

D Lawson in the ST also argues that:

Johnson has achieved something: he has demonstrated to the public, though perhaps not in the way he wanted, that parliament would do anything it could to block Brexit. 

Incidentally, it is also now clear that laws are not descended straight from Heaven but are made in grubby political haggling processes -- to claim the dignity of the law is transparent disingenuousness.  Would the EU accept a request based not on sincerity (that is normal political calculation) but the results of this 'law'?

And there is inevitably a contrary legal opinion about the Extension Bill:

As the London School of Economics lecturer in public law Robert Craig argued last week, the bill proposed by Hilary Benn is unlike that earlier put forward by Yvette Cooper, which mandated the prime minister (Mrs May) merely to ask the EU for an extension to the UK’s membership. Benn’s bill also instructs the PM to accept any extension that may be granted, including all the EU budgetary costs involved....Craig’s point is that this is an unprecedented usurpation of the “prerogative powers of the crown . . . exercised by government”. None of the negotiations of earlier EU treaties were directed remotely by the collective instruction of unaccountable legislators, nor could they have been: such matters are conducted, as of right, by the executive — though their conclusions may later be rejected by the legislature. So, according to Craig, Johnson would be entitled to refuse crown consent to the Benn bill.