Boris is acting like some kind of dictator

PARTS of the Internal Market Bill are cause for great concern.

These are not the issues affecting the EU, Northern Ireland and international law being hotly debated in most media.

They are small phrases slipped into the main text, for example in Section 45, which allow the Executive (the PM and privileged ministers) sweeping powers with no fear of retribution; these will “have effect notwithstanding any relevant international or domestic law with which they may be incompatible or inconsistent”.

My emphasis on the domestic aspect is because this seems to have escaped notice in the general hullabaloo.

In the wrong hands, this endangers a whole host of freedoms, rights, standards that we expect to be protected; they could be eradicated in order that the provisions of that other trade bill (first reading June 22) allowing total secrecy in negotiation, the NHS to be endangered and excluding parliament from the entire process can be pursued.

The current Bill continues, it would allow ministers to make regulations that ignore “any other legislation, convention or rule of international or domestic law whatsoever... of the European Court or of any other court or tribunal.”

The PM seems to be wanting carte blanche to overturn laws he dislikes, courts which oppose him (eg the Supreme Court in judging him wrong in proroguing parliament last year). This is not dissimilar to laws passed in the early days of Hitler’s regime nor, more recently, of Erdogan in Turkey.

Examples from other dictatorships overturning previously democratic systems abound; such actions are to be deplored and vigorously opposed.

This seems to be an attempt to undermine our parliamentary democracy, legal system and the rule of law. It is devious in exploiting the antipathy to the EU and using the associated rhetoric as a smokescreen for this attempted violation of those institutions, systems and rights which we hold dear.

Those are the very political, legal and social structures of which we as a nation are proud. They are the things with which we have identified; we have seen them as being strengths of our culture.

They are the things for which my grandfathers and great uncles fought in the 1914-1918 war, and for which my father and uncles fought in the 1939-1945 war. Their destruction was not part of any deal or manifesto associated with leaving the EU.

All those MPs who did not oppose this bill should be contacted by their constituents in order to explain

WHY they were content to let it pass its second reading with their acquiescence.

I fear that this incompetent government is hoping to pass this in order to deal with the chaos attendant upon a no deal Brexit.

It would then be able to rule by diktat, enforcing whatever measures it chose, having emasculated ALL the forces of law and order.

What else can be expected of a government of which the chief law enforcement officer, Robert Buckland – the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice – says: “If I see the law being broken in ways that I find unacceptable, I will go”.

He should be threatening legal sanctions!! His action should NOT be dependent on what he finds acceptable.

Richard Lawrie Plymouth