This is the most dangerous UK government we have seen in our lifetimes

It used to be the case that a Prime Minister that had deliberately shut down parliament against its will might have felt sufficiently ashamed that they would have resigned when the courts found against them. It certainly would have been true for most of my lifetime that they would have shown some contrition when the verdict became clear. If you ask me to prove those claims of course I cannot, because no previous PM would have even thought it permissible to shut down parliament against its will. But since WWII many senior politicians have resigned when they made a mistake of this magnitude. But Johnson is a Prime Minister like none before him, as Steve Richards shows with authority.

If instead they had appeared unapologetic and kept insisting they were right, political parties in the past would have shown much disquiet over what had happened. Yet on Wednesday we saw the massed ranks of Conservative MPs cheering as the Prime Minister declared he thought he had done nothing wrong. He says he has respect for the law, but what respect is he giving it if he simply asserts all supreme court judges unanimously misunderstood the constitution. This is no criminal claiming his innocence as he is taken down to the cells, but a Prime Minister telling all 11 supreme court judges that he knows the law better than they do.

If you read the judgement of the supreme court it is obvious that they are correct and are acting as the ultimate upholders of the constitution. Parliament is supreme, and cannot be shut down against its will for the convenience of the executive. As they note, the government didn’t even offer any explanation of why they felt it necessary to prorogue parliament for 5 weeks when preparation for a Queen’s Speech normally takes 5 days. What they did claim is that it had nothing to do with their own political interest, yet the PM and his allies had the cheek to infer that the judges had decided for political reasons to do with Brexit. Of course that claim was a huge political tell, because that was exactly the motivation for them shutting down parliament.

What this case shows is that good government in this country relies on the executive acting within the constitution and obeying the law. This government is so dangerous because it seeks at every turn to ignore the constitution and use its power for its own ends, in the full knowledge that their actions will be challenged in the courts. So the PM says we will be leaving come what may on 31st October, despite an Act of Parliament telling him he must ask for an extension. He knows he will be breaking the law, but just as parliament will not get its lost days back, perhaps the UK will have crashed out of the EU before the courts make him follow the law.

Then there is language. Words like betrayal and surrender, once the preserve of the Brexit press, have now become the words of our Prime Minister. Words are chosen for their emotive effect alone: how can postponing the date we leave the EU be described as surrender. It is the most obvious manifestation of something that should be clear to everyone: Johnson is acting like Trump and employing the tactics of Trump quite deliberately. It is the language that violent thugs on the right happily repeat, and directly leads to a rise in hate crimes on our streets. It is the language and tactics of someone who wants to brush aside all checks on their absolute power, the language and tactics of an elected dictator.

One MP has already been murdered, and a plot by right wing thugs to murder another was foiled. Yet the response of the Prime Minister and his chief aide to concern about death threats from any MP that dares to oppose their policies is that they should do what the Prime Minister asks and the threats would end. Like many dictators they effectively use violence and threats of violence to help their cause..

The lesson we cannot avoid drawing is that this government has become dangerously rogue, and the party from which it comes is no better. People are no longer safe with it in charge. In the past, at least the press would have held the government to account, but now it eggs it on. A BBC that also might have told inconvenient facts has been threatened into submission. A rogue government is a big enough problem, but one that can control large parts of the media is able to pretend it represents the people versus the establishment.

All Johnson’s actions and provocations have one aim. He aims to pretend at the forthcoming general election that he alone is fighting for the people against an establishment of parliament, the judges and the EU that are combining to block the people’s will. Apparently calling an act of parliament a surrender bill polls well. He hopes the combination of a FPTP system and a divided opposition will mean he can win an election even though he commands the support of a minority of the British people. To this end the press that is his propaganda arm have attempted to demonise the leader of the main opposition so that too many say they could not possibly vote for him.

The real threat to this country today is not someone who champions Jewish causes outside Israel, or someone who sees that our current economic system is failing too many. The real threat lies in far right thugs and a government that wants to destroy our pluralist democracy. The only way we have to stop a Prime Minister whose over the top language is used in death threats to MPs, and who describes those who ask him to be careful as talking humbug, is to remove him from power.

We can only have one of two Prime Ministers in 2020. It is essential for those who want to protect our pluralist democracy to ensure they vote tactically to remove the Prime Minister who threatens that democracy. If anyone believes our current Prime Minister will change his ways if he is in charge of a minority government just needs to watch him now. People tell me negative messages do not win elections. Preserving a pluralist democracy and not inciting far right violence surely promotes the positive messages of mutual respect, democracy rather than dictatorship, and for our MPs and others to work in peace rather than fearing the next violent attack. When a Prime Minster responds to the fears of MPs over death threats encouraged by his language by saying humbug, it is time for him to be removed. 

Why the Supreme Court must protect our constitution

This is a very short post about a critical matter. It will not be a 'on the one hand, on the other' type of discussion because there is one overwhelming argument. It is about protecting our parliamentary democracy, a democracy that in one area in particular relied on norms of behaviour that have now been broken. The Prime Minister has shut down parliament for his own political reasons, and the only institution that can stop both that and a Prime Minister doing it in the future is the UK’s legal system.

According to David Allen Green, Scottish judges are less disinclined to get involved in political matters than English judges. If this is correct, then the decision of three senior Scottish judges that Johnson had lied to the Queen in asking to suspend (prorogue) parliament may be overturned. That, to put it plainly, would be a disaster for the UK constitution.

Why am I sure parliament was suspended for political reasons? Because shutting down parliament for 5 weeks is not necessary before a Queen’s Speech. The excuse that parliament normally suspends itself for the party conference season will not wash because (a) Johnson knew full well parliament was thinking of not doing so because of the gravity of the current situation, and (b) it was suspended well before that season. The three top Scottish judges also thought the motivation was clear. 

Why is this so important? The reason is obvious. If the executive can suspend parliament whenever it likes, for purely political reasons (it doesn’t like what parliament is doing), then the executive have the power to end our parliamentary democracy. First it is for a few weeks, and then it is for a few years. It is simply nonsense to say that this is a political matter, because politics has been shut down. Parliament cannot even vote no confidence in the Executive because parliament has been suspended. The argument that the law should not get incolved in political matters does not wash on this occasion.

The first best solution to this loophole in our constitution is to do what other countries do, and let parliament vote on its suspension, much as it does if it wants a recess. But until that happens, our courts are the only line of defence against a Prime Minister who suspends parliament against its will for his own political reasons. If the Supreme Court cannot defend our constitution when parliamentary politics is shut down, who can?

Johnson suspends parliament to force a crash out Brexit

On Brexit at least (and who knows what may be next) UK democracy has been suspended. Yesterday the Prime Minister drastically reduced the number of days parliament will sit until we automatically crash out of the EU. On the critical issue of Brexit, the Prime Minister has become an unelected dictator. He intends to use his dictatorial power to restrict the supply of medicines and food to the British people.

The device he has used is a quaint part of the UK constitution where the Queen decides when parliament sits or does not sit. Nowadays the Queen has no power so she takes advice from the executive. The Prime Minister instructed his lackeys to ask the Queen to prorogue (the technical name for suspend) parliament for 5 weeks and the queen approved. It is as if the President could shut down Congress whenever he liked, and in particular whenever they were about to do something he disliked.

It was cleverly done, in that it allowed parliament to sit for effectively four days in early September and probably about a week just before we crash out of the EU, so the PM could claim parliament still had “plenty of time” to discuss Brexit. Johnson, like Trump, is a serial liar. As the former head of the civil service Lord Kerslake said, to believe this is anything other than an attempt to critically curtail the chances that parliament can stop us crashing out is an insult to the intelligence.

Johnson knows that only the most foolish will believe the 'plenty of time' lie. But Johnson's big idea that he wants wavering Tory MPs to believe is that the EU will only change the backstop if they truly believe the UK will crash out. This is one more Leave misjudgment about the EU, in a long list of them. The EU do not want the UK to crash out, but they are not going to sacrifice peace in Northern Ireland to avoid it. Any UK government not made up of anti-EU fanatics would want to avoid that to.

Like so much in the UK’s unwritten constitution, the Queens right to decide when parliament sits is a hangover from our history that has been allowed to remain because it was understood that the Queen would follow the advice of the Prime Minister (the last monarch that didn’t had his head cut off) and the Prime Minister would respect the will of the parliament. In the UK parliament is sovereign, but only because there were unwritten norms that assumed no government would be undemocratic enough to disobey.

Article 50, the process by which the UK is negotiating to leave, also makes an assumption that governments reflect the interests of its citizens. It says that after two years, unless the EU extends that deadline, the leaving country crashes out with no trade deal, and indeed no deal on anything else. It was assumed that no rational government would ever want to crash out and so this deadline was a great incentive to agree to a deal of the EU’s liking. The UK now has a government that relishes the opportunity to leave without a deal, which the government’s own advice suggests will lead to shortages of food, fuel and medicines.

Does this affront to democracy matter if it is restricted to the issue of Brexit, where a referendum voted to leave? It matters because in that referendum the Leave side only talked about leaving with a deal. That is the mandate that this advisory referendum provided - to leave with a deal. So leaving with no deal does not even respect the referendum.result.

Here are some comments by MPs about the idea of a Prime Minister proroguing (i.e. suspending) parliament to get their way on Brexit.

“I think it would be a terrible thing that having said we should have more power in this country and trust our institutions more ... and shut the door on parliament”

“[Proroguing parliament] goes against everything that those men who waded onto those beaches, fought and died for and I will not have it.”

“It is a ridiculous suggestion”

“Delivery on democracy while trashing democracy. We are not selecting a dictator.”

Not any old MPs, but now ministers in the Prime Minister’s cabinet. Yet none has expressed any regret at it actually happening, now that they have some power. How far the Conservative party has fallen.

Let’s think about what this actually means if we crash out of the EU. A measure that will have profound implications for most UK residents will come into effect without approval from the House of Commons and with hardly any scrutiny. The official document that sets out the likely impact on food and fuel supplies, medicines and much else remains secret, and no House of Commons committee has had a chance to examine claims that the government has somehow avoided the shortages this document predicts.

You may say that parliament overwhelmingly gave the approval for the government to start the Article 50 process, but on this occasion - and time and again subsequently - MPs have not anticipated how fanatical those advocating No Deal are. They will certainly not have anticipated a No Dealer becoming Prime Minister and suspending parliament to crash out via Article 50. If you had said that more than two years ago you would have been laughed at. UK democracy has fallen a long way in two years.

For those tempted to say this is just one issue and just five weeks (the total length of parliament’s suspension), I would say two things. First, this is hardly a minor issue, but one of the biggest issues that the UK has had to deal with in decades. On this vital issue, Johnson is trying to force an outcome that most people do not want. Second, pluralist democracy normally does not end with a bang but in stages of plurality. No doubt when the Hungarian government in 2011 abolished its fiscal council plenty of Hungarians thought little of it. That has been followed by the end of judicial independence and and independent media. It is clear this government also has little respect for parliamentary democracy.

Will the majority of MPs in the little time they have left do enough to stop us crashing out of the EU? I honestly do not know, but I am pessimistic because only Johnson can extend Article 50 and I now think it is quite likely he will try to frustrate parliament in other ways and that he will ignore parliament if it did succeed. A vote of no confidence may be the only option MPs have. Will Johnson’s suspension of parliamentary democracy unite enough MPs to do this? Again I have no idea, but I can say this.

If Jeremy Corbyn in government did anything similar to this in order to get one of his policies through, I would argue he was no longer fit for office. But perhaps putting power above principle, as the MPs whose quotes I show above clearly do, is today a characteristic of almost the entire right of UK politics? The principle at stake right now is parliamentary democracy itself.

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