The Attorney General of the UK is supposed to be an expert on law and to uphold it. When it is proved that he provided advice to the Prime Minister to act illegally he should resign. When it is proved that the Prime Minister lied to the Queen she can no longer have confidence in him and he too must go. Instead they are both there doubling down on their lies and increasing the intensity of them.
A week ago they were insisting to the courts that they had done nothing unusual and were in no way trying to prevent Parliament from meeting and if they were it had nothing to do with Brexit and they had the greatest respect for our Parliamentary traditions. This week, with not a trace of shame, they tell Parliament to its face that they think it is dead to them and they don’t care what it thinks.
There is a centuries old tradition in this country that Parliament is sovereign. Protecting that sovereignty featured as a major plank in the Brexit campaign. Now the Prime Minister and the Attorney General are determined to ignore Parliament and sell the narrative to the British People that their wonderful leadership is being thwarted by these pesky democrats.
British democracy works on a very simple principle. A General Election selects MPs to represent constituencies and those MPs meet in Parliament to decide the laws of the land. The independent courts then interpret those laws.
Boris Johnson does not have a majority in Parliament. He has never won a single vote in it. He therefore has no right to be Prime Minister. He is the elected leader of the Conservative Party. He isn’t the elected leader of the country.
The highest court in the land has confirmed that Parliament is the sovereign body in this country and the Prime Minister is meant to answer to it. It has also confirmed that the Prime Minister tried to prevent that Parliament from meeting illegally and for political advantage. He told the Queen a direct lie about the reason he was doing this.
Regardless of anyone’s attitude to Brexit that should ring real alarm bells. We should be experiencing a collapse in public support for the government and a mass realisation that we are being led by a systematic liar who hasn’t a clue about how to deliver a workable Brexit deal.
Instead what we have is tribal loyalty. Politics as a spectator sport where you support your side regardless of how bad it is. Johnson is trying to make a virtue out of aggressive determination to deliver. He is trying to sell the narrative that only he can get the country out of this mess. Whilst taking us every day deeper and deeper into it.
Will it work? Will voters say “Well he may be a lying philanderer who wants to rule as a dictator but he’s a strong man who gets things done”? Or will they look at the chaos and division he has created and blame it on his elitist arrogance.
As always in politics there will be some in each camp. The crucial question is what will those who haven’t signed up for a cause think.
I fear that Johnson is going to come back from Brussels with a cobbled together variant of May’s bad deal and put that before Parliament as a triumph. I fear that enough MPs will be so relieved to avoid No Deal that they will vote for it. I fear Johnson will then call an election and walk it. Then I really do fear for the fate of this country as all the nice spending promises evaporate and Johnson tries to make us a clone of Trump’s America with a beaten Parliament firmly under his control.
The good thing about fears like this is that I don’t think I am the only person in the country who feels them. I think the majority of this country doesn’t like having a lying, cheating womaniser in charge. I think the majority of this country values the independence of Parliament and the courts and doesn’t like seeing the Queen lied to. I think few who voted to get out of Europe and restore our Parliamentary Sovereignty expected it to mean subjecting ourselves to becoming a junior partner of the USA unable to resist whatever unequal trade deal Trump offers us.
What is needed to empower those who think like this is to counter aggressive divisions with intelligent and fair collaboration. We need a government of national unity to see us through the 31st October deadline. We need extremist government and bullying tactics to fail. We then need a fair referendum on the real deal instead of the stale lying promises. Give people a single transferable choice vote on no deal, the available deal, and no Brexit.
If the progressive forces cannot win such a referendum then it is a poor lookout. The idea that we can simply cancel the last referendum isn’t wise. The only way to beat the reaction is to face it down and win a vote against it. The only way to beat the reaction is to openly fight it and win not to try and copy its tactics of manipulating outcomes and simply cancel the old referendum outcome.
One of the prime reasons the elite who have temporarily captured the UK government has opted for aggression and division is because it is only in that kind of atmosphere that they think they can win. What they can’t beat is reasonable people uniting against them. Whilst Labour and the LibDems continue to believe that they and they alone can form the next government and every other party must stand aside everywhere in favour of the one true party of the working class or the one true defender of the European Union the chances of us winning are massively reduced.
Political parties need to get over themselves. We need a government of national unity. We need to go into the next election with a Progressive Alliance where all the progressive parties gain support from the others in some key seats and give payback in others. If they are expecting those of us who think there is a real climate emergency to step gracefully aside everywhere at such a critical time then they are mistaking being up for collaboration with being mugs.
Because whilst we fight over Brexit the rainforests are burning, Greenland is melting, glaciers are collapsing, sea levels are rising, plastic is being dumped across the entire planet and chaotic weather is increasing the frequency of floods and storms.
The next generation will be angry with us if we leave them a country with a weakened democracy under the orbit of an aggressive USA. It will be a lot more angry with us if we leave them with great chunks of London, Bristol, Liverpool, Hull, Newcastle, Cardiff and Glasgow under water.