Len McCluskey, general secretary of trade union Unite, has said Prime Minister Boris Johnson could be placed under citizen's arrest after his suspension of Parliament was ruled unlawful by a Scottish court.
"It is quite extraordinary what the Scottish courts have ruled. My advice to Johnson is don't go up to Scotland, you're liable to face a citizen's arrest, so he'd best keep in his bunker somewhere in either Eton or Westminster,” he told Sky News.
His comments immediately followed senior judges ruling the Prime Minister's decision to suspend Parliament was "improper" and "unlawful, and had been done with "the purpose of stymying Parliament". The Prime Minister suspended Parliament for five weeks 9th September – it’s due to resume business 14th October, just two and a half weeks before the Brexit deadline.
The case was brought to the Court of Session in Edinburgh by a cross-party group of 75 parliamentarians, who argued the PM exceeded his powers - the government said the issue should be a political rather than a legal one, and Lord Doherty ruled last week it was not a matter for the courts.
However, that ruling was immediately appealed and the judgement was delivered 11th September.
The case is now expected to be challenged in the Supreme Court by the Government, which said it was "disappointed" by the decision.
By contrast, Shadow Brexit secretary Keir Starmer said the court had made a “powerful judgement”, while Labour's shadow attorney general Shami Chakrabarti said the ruling demonstrated “privileged” Johnson “was not above the law”.