Consejo y Ayuda; Caddies
Excepción 1 La Bola Comienza a Moverse justo Después de Que el Jugador Inicia el Backswing para el Golpe: Ejecutando un golpe a una bola en movimiento en esta
On 18th March 2019, John Bercow invoked a 1604 parliamentary convention from page 397 of
Erskine May, a book of parliamentary practice (RTÉ 2019b). According to the convention, which hadn’t been used for almost 100 years, the same matter can’t be voted on twice in the same
parliamentary session (RTÉ 2019b). John Bercow’s invocation of the parliamentary convention was to prevent the third meaningful vote from occurring, and he claimed that a third meaningful vote would require a “substantial change” to the withdrawal agreement (RTÉ 2019b). John Bercow’s interpretations of parliamentary conventions are binding “unless there is a majority vote to break with an invoked ruling” (RTÉ 2019b).
Some in opposition to the withdrawal agreement welcome John Bercow’s ruling and said that they would rather Theresa May request for an extension of Article 50 of the TEU than support the withdrawal agreement, believing than an extension might give them a greater influence over the final Brexit outcome (Coates and Wright 2019). It was reported that ministers expected a maximum nine-month delay, which would require Britain to participate in the EP elections from 23rd to 26th
(Baczynska 2019a), an ongoing legal debate that Patel (2019) claimed “may work in Theresa May’s favour, as she could use it to persuade rebel Brexiteer MPs to back her deal”.
However, for those in favour of the withdrawal agreement, John Bercow’s ruling initiated a “major constitutional crisis”, and led to accusations of John Bercow having pro-EU bias because he voted for Britain to remain in the EU in the referendum (Rayner, Swinford and Hope 2019). According to The Sun (2019c), “the same man who two months ago trashed centuries of procedure to help Remainers now says we must stick rigidly to ancient rules”. This was presumably in reference to the controversial amendment put forward by Dominic Grieve on 9th January 2019 to a government
business motion that some claimed shouldn’t have been amendable and therefore shouldn’t have been accepted by John Bercow (ITV News 2019c). White (2019) claimed that John Bercow saying that a second vote on MPs taking parliamentary time from the government or a second referendum would depend on the “circumstances” was “one rule for the Government, and a different one for everyone else” and claimed that “there is little that Conservative MPs can do about this – they don’t have the votes”.
According to ITV News (2019a), a British government source said that John Bercow’s motive was “to rule out an MV (meaningful vote) this week which also stands in the way of a securing a shorter extension”, and that “what he really wants is a longer extension, where Parliament will take over the process and force a softer form of Brexit”. However, according to McKinstry (2019), “Bercow’s intention with his veto may have been to sabotage Brexit. But he could end up achieving the exact opposite”. Moreover, Conservative Party MP, James Cleverly, claimed that John Bercow’s ruling should have been made before the second meaningful vote as it may have influenced more MPs to vote in favour of the withdrawal agreement (Deacon 2019).
Regarding the alleged attempts to prevent Brexit from occurring, Grimes (2019) claimed that: It started even before the referendum when David Cameron banned the Civil Service from preparing for Leave winning the referendum, forcing the new post-referendum government to start a delivery plan from scratch. It continued when Philip Hammond refused to allow vital spending on no-deal preparation. And it’s ending with attempts by Remain MPs like Hilary Benn to “take control” of parliamentary business so he can ride roughshod over our vote - enabled by a disgracefully partisan Speaker in John Bercow.
Despite David Cameron saying that “the Civil Service are working round the clock to support my negotiation” before Britain’s referendum on EU membership and “overseeing such “apocalyptic”
warnings” (Parfitt 2016) in the British government’s report on the process for withdrawing from the EU published on 29th February 2016 (GOV.UK 2016), some Eurosceptic MPs said that David
Cameron stopping civil servants from developing contingency plans was “total hypocrisy”, “totally irresponsible”, and “disgraceful” (Parfitt 2016). After Britain’s referendum on EU membership, Conservative Party MP and former Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, Iain Duncan Smith, criticised Philip Hammond and the British Treasury for “acting like government saboteurs - hell bent on wrecking Brexit” by resisting spending increases on no-deal Brexit planning “even if it strengthened Theresa May’s negotiating hand and is likely the cash will never have to be spent” because “it would send the message to Brussels that Britain really is ready to walk away” (Cole and Hawkes 2018).
The Solicitor General for England and Wales, Robert Buckland, and suggested that Theresa May could bypass John Bercow’s ruling by requesting the Queen to discontinue and restart the
parliamentary session (Rayner, Swinford and Hope 2019), known as proroguing parliament (White 2019; McTague 2019), which usually begin and end in the spring (Www.parliament.uk 2019l), because John Bercow’s ruling would then no longer apply and the third meaningful vote could be the first item of business. However, in this case, an extension of Article 50 of the TEU would still need to be requested because the House of Commons’ approval of the withdrawal agreement by 29th
March 2019 still wouldn’t be feasible, and the government would need to gain the unlikely support of every Conservative Party and DUP MP for the Queen’s Speech (White 2019) “in a required vote following six days of debate on the speech’s contents. Traditionally, if the government fails to win parliament’s backing for the Queen’s Speech, the prime minister is forced to resign” (Wright 2019).
White (2019) and McTague (2019) argued that Theresa May could bypass John Bercow’s ruling by introducing an extension of Article 50 of the TEU until the end of June and ruling out further extensions to the motion, which John Bercow could consider a “substantial change” to the withdrawal agreement (RTÉ 2019b). The Sun (2019c) suggested that presenting an extension to Article 50 of the TEU alongside the withdrawal agreement could be considered a substantial change. White (2019) suggested a paving motion “stating that it is the will of the House to have another vote on the deal” (McTague 2019), which would enable the government to resubmit the withdrawal agreement for another vote, although this would be unlikely because of the substantial defeats in the first and second meaningful votes (White 2019). White (2019) also suggested changing the provisions in the British parliament’s 2018 European Union (Withdrawal) Act and
adopting legislation to ensure that there would be no limit to how many times the withdrawal agreement could be resubmitted. It was also suggested that that Theresa May could negotiate supplementary agreements with the EU or introduce some changes to the non-binding political declaration (RTÉ 2019b; European Council 2018b).
Conservative Party MP, Nick Boles, tweeted “not sure what all the fuss is about. If the PM thinks she has a majority for a third meaningful vote, she will also have a majority for a motion to set aside the Speaker’s ruling on the Erskine May convention. If she doesn’t, no point making the attempt” (Boles 2019, as cited in Heffer and McGuinness 2019). According to McTague (2019), “Theresa May’s problem is less the ruling Monday from Speaker John Bercow that she cannot keep bringing her deal back to parliament hoping for a different answer, than the fact she does not have a
majority” and “the route out of her crisis is to assemble a majority for a course of action — any course of action”. Stephen Barclay said that “the speaker himself has said that where the will of the house is for a certain course of action it is important that that does follow. But the speaker’s ruling does raise the bar. Clearly, if members of parliament themselves are changing their vote, that does suggest that circumstances have changed” (McTague 2019).
Simon Coveney said that John Bercow’s ruling was “yet another problem” (Waterfield 2019b). According to McTague (2019) “Bercow’s ruling is a pain for the government. But the real cause is the same problem that has existed since November: Theresa May cannot muster a majority behind her deal”. The EU27 were pessimistic that Theresa May could gain parliamentary support for the withdrawal agreement, Guy Verhofstadt questioned the EU27’s consideration of a request for an extension of Article 50 of the TEU if the third meaningful vote is cancelled (Waterfield 2019b), which could delay a decision on granting the extension until “one hour before” Britain was
expected to formally withdraw from the EU on 29th March 2019 at 23:00 GMT (Rayner, Swinford
and Hope 2019). Donald Tusk suggested a fourth meaningful vote the week after the European Council summit on 21st and 22nd March 2019 (Waterfield 2019b).