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| Version 0 | Version 1 |
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| Judge dismisses no-deal Brexit challenge | Judge dismisses no-deal Brexit challenge |
| (30 minutes later) | |
| A Scottish judge has dismissed a move to force the Prime Minister Boris Johnson to seek to delay the UK's departure from the EU. | |
| Lord Pentland had been asked to consider the effects of the Benn Act. | Lord Pentland had been asked to consider the effects of the Benn Act. |
| He said there "can be no doubt" that the prime minister, through his legal team, has agreed to abide by the law. | |
| The legislation was passed by MPs with the intention of preventing the UK leaving the European Union without a deal on 31 October. | The legislation was passed by MPs with the intention of preventing the UK leaving the European Union without a deal on 31 October. |
| It requires the prime minister to send a letter to the EU formally requesting an extension to the Brexit timetable. | |
| Lord Pentland said the UK government had accepted had it must "comply fully" with the act and would not seek to "frustrate its purpose". | |
| As a result, he said there was no need for "coercive orders" against the UK government or against the prime minister. | |
| The petitioners had argued that a series of public statements by the prime minster indicated Mr Johnson was planning to break the law. | |
| However, the judge ruled that the UK government's public statements were an expression of its "political policy" and were "clearly not intended to be taken as conclusive statements of the government's understanding of its legal obligations". | |
| And he said it would be "destructive of one of the core principles of constitutional propriety and of the mutual trust that is the bedrock of the relationship between the court and the Crown" if Mr Johnson reneged on his assurances to the court. | |
| Lord Pentland said that as the prime minister and the government had given "unequivocal assurances" to comply with the 2019 Act, he was "not persuaded that it is necessary for the court to grant the orders sought or any variant of them". | |
| One of the petitioners, Jo Maugham QC, said the decision would be appealed. | |
| Shortly after the ruling was publicly released, he tweeted: "There are now risks of an unlawful Brexit that would not, had the decision gone the other way, have existed." | |
| He added his thanks to Lord Pentland for engaging "fairly and bravely with some really quite difficult questions about, at their heart, the state of the nations we both live in". | |
| "I hope history proves the optimists, like him, right," he said. |