No-deal Brexit legal challenge dismissed by Belfast judge
LEGAL challenges to a no-deal Brexit centre on political matters that the courts should not intervene on, the High Court in Belfast has ruled.
A senior judge rejected all grounds of challenge to Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s strategy for taking the UK out of the EU, including claims that it would threaten the Northern Ireland peace process.
Dismissing cases brought by victims campaigner Raymond McCord and two other applicants, Lord Justice Bernard McCloskey held that they were non-justiciable.
He declared: “Considered in their totality (the applicants’ challenges) point inexorably to the conclusion that these cases trespass upon the prohibited domain of the non-justiciable.
“They qualify to be dismissed on this ground alone.”
His decision underpins a verdict reached by senior English judges in a separate challenge over Mr Johnson’s decision to suspend parliament for five weeks ahead of the October 31 Brexit deadline.
But with a Scottish court ruling that the Prime Minister acted unlawfully over the prorogation move, the Supreme Court in London will sit next week to clarify the legal position.
Meanwhile, Mr McCord pledged to seek an urgent appeal in his failed bid to secure a judicial review.
He insisted that his claims about the legality of the parliamentary shutdown was not dealt with at the case heard in Belfast.
The campaigner, whose son was murdered by loyalist paramilitaries in 1997, said: “I am determined to take my case to the Supreme Court. Northern Ireland’s voice must be heard at the highest court in the land because Brexit is going to affect us worse than the rest of the UK.”
According to his legal team, the Government is unlawfully trying to quit the EU without an agreement at any costs. They claim that such a departure breaches the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 which safeguards the 1998 Good Friday Agreement.