Better for us all that Parliament is in charge

ONCE again your frequent correspondent, Jack Haynes, has entertained us all with yet another of his history lessons (Viewpoints, October 5).

The 1689 Bill of Rights to which he refers is more properly known as the Act Declaring the Rights and Liberties of the Subject and was largely concerned with the relationship between the monarch and Parliament. It confirmed that Parliament alone, rather than the monarch, had the right to levy taxes, raise an army and wage wars. It was the arbitrary use of royal power characterised by the rule of the Stuarts, not the law courts, that the Bill was aimed at, for it is in the courts that the laws passed by Parliament are tested. It was, an assertion of the sovereignty of Parliament, something which Boris Johnson, like Charles I and James II, has attempted to subvert.

In addition, the Act established the independence of the judiciary. The recent decision by the Supreme Court does nothing to prevent or delay Brexit, it merely makes clear that governments, like the rest of us, must proceed lawfully.

As for the question, ‘Who’s in charge?,’ surely the answer in 2019 should be, as it was in 1689, that ‘Parliament’s in charge’ and that this is how it should be in a representative democracy like the United Kingdom. Better for all of us for Parliament to be in charge than to hand power to the likes of Mr Johnson’s ‘eminence grise,’ Dominic Cummins. Brian Travis, Salford