Mike Vickers' Blog

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/mar/03/gina-miller-eu-delay-brexit-no-deal

Matthew d’Ancona thinks it less likely but it does look like a way forward out of the swamp of the Brexit mess.
And as Ancona says Gina Miller has already proved she can bring about the Unexpected and she has the determination to do so.

So here he goes:

“Armed with a legal opinion written by Kieron Beal QC and three other senior lawyers, the co-founder of the pro-remain campaign Lead Not Leave will argue that the EU council of ministers could itself, unilaterally, extend the article 50 deadline.

Why should it even contemplate doing so? First, because – as Miller’s legal paper points out – “the wording of article 50(3) presupposes that the European council take the decisive lead with the consent of the withdrawing member state”. Second, because the EU has a legal duty to all its member states to ensure that any such withdrawal is not damaging to what article 13(1) of the treaty on European Union calls the “consistency, effectiveness and continuity of its policies and actions”, or to the principle spelled out in article 13(2): “Pursuant to the principle of sincere cooperation the EU and the member states shall, in full mutual respect, assist each other in carrying out the tasks which flow from the treaties.”

Miller’s point, of course, is highly political as well as specifically jurisprudential. By circulating this opinion at the European parliament and in Brussels, she hopes to remind the EU that the legal, practical and moral obligation to prevent a catastrophic no-deal outcome is not confined to Westminster. Her message is addressed to figures such as Donald Tusk, the president of the council, and Jean-Claude Juncker, his counterpart at the European commission, but also to the EU body politic as a whole.”

“But she is reminding the 27 other member states that they cannot, as a matter of law as well as of supranational ethics, play Pilate and wash their hands of this mess. We are, to coin a phrase, all in this together”

If she makes the case and the EU acts, then Gina Miller deserves a statue in Parliament Square alongside Churchill.