A hung Parliament means problems for Brexit-related laws

Rows over the EU withdrawal bill point to more difficulties in future   

London, Sept.7.– A key reason for leaving the European Union was to restore parliamentary sovereignty. So it is ironic that this week’s debate over the EU withdrawal bill, formerly known as the Great Repeal Bill, should centre on claims that the executive is usurping parliamentary powers—even more so since David Davis, the Brexit secretary, for years fought hard against such government encroachment.

Nobody disputes that the bill is needed. It gives effect to Brexit by repealing the 1972 European Communities Act. To provide continuity it also translates into British law 12,000-odd EU regulations written in the past 45 years. The big argument is over how to do this. MPs have raised two main issues. The first is the bill’s use of secondary legislation to amend laws by ministerial fiat without parliamentary scrutiny. The second is the question of Parliament’s role in overseeing Brexit.

Autonomous enclave amid violence of Syrian conflict   

The now autonomous (and multi-cultural) territory of Rojava is attempting localised, egalitarian government in Kurdish regions won back from ISIS in northern Syria.

Sept.4.─ We arrived at night, but the heat in Qamishli was still oppressive. As soon as we left the city’s small airport, still under the control of Bashar al-Assad’s soldiers and police, we entered the territory of the Democratic Federation of Northern Syria, or Rojava (‘west’ in Kurdish). At least two million people (60% Kurds) live here on land reclaimed by force from ISIS. The territory, along Turkey’s southern border, is bounded by the Euphrates and Iraq.

Since 2014, Syrians living here have been part of a political experiment inspired by Abdullah Öcalan, founder of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), imprisoned by Turkey since 1999. The PKK and its Syrian ally, the Democratic Union Party (PYD), abandoning Marxism-Leninism, have taken inspiration for over a decade from the libertarian communalism of the American environmentalist Murray Bookchin (1921-2006).