Boris Johnson’s decision to suspend Parliament was unlawful, the Supreme Court has ruled.
The BBC described the decision as “politically catastrophic” for Conservative leader Boris Johnson. It is being openly suggested that Johnson may soon become the country’s shortest serving Prime Minister.
Johnson, attending United Nations meetings in New York, at first refused to answer reporters’ questions, before later stating that while he disagreed with the judges’ ruling, he would abide by it.
Tory Johnson prorogued Parliament for five weeks earlier this month, but the court said it was wrong to stop MPs carrying out duties in the run-up to Brexit.
Today’s historic ruling confirms that Johnson lied to the Queen and broke the law
Commons Speaker John Bercow quickly confirmed that MPs would now return tomorrow, although Johnson will not be required to face Prime Minister’s Questions.
The immediate conclusions from the Supreme Court ruling must be that as Prime Minister, Johnson broke the law, and he even lied to the Queen, heaven forbid. Such acts would usually result in a prosecution.
The judgement from 11 justices on the UK’s highest court follows an emergency three-day hearing last week that exposed fundamental legal differences over interpreting the country’s unwritten constitution.
Johnson was accused of shutting down parliament in order to stop MPs from scrutinising his Brexit plans.
The decision was read out by Lady Hale, the president of the Supreme Court. None of the parties were provided with advance copies of the judgement due to its extreme sensitivity.
You can access the court’s own summary of this historic ruling, as a pdf, by clicking here.
Lady Hale said, “the effect on the fundamentals of democracy was extreme”.
A raft of MPs has now called for Johnson to resign as Prime Minister. Downing Street said it was “currently processing the verdict”.
The unctuous Mario Creatura is a big fan of adulterer, liar and crook Boris Johnson
In Croydon, the council leader Tony Newman used the occasion to start trolling another local councillor, Mario Creatura, the Conservative Party’s prospective parliamentary candidate for the Labour-held seat of Croydon Central.
“So Mario Creatura,” Newman tweeted (or had someone do it for him as the tweet was unusually free of Newman’s usual writing errors), “as you have been amongst the current PM’s most vocal supporters and a defender of his now illegal actions, your position as a Tory PPC must surely now be untenable?”
Which many will consider to be a fair point.
Newman’s Blairite mate, Steve Reed OBE, the MP for Croydon North, said, “Surely Johnson must now resign? He has lied to the Queen and illegally closed down Parliament to avoid scrutiny. He is unfit to continue in the office he holds.”
Len Duvall, Labour’s leader at the London Assembly, is very familiar with the shenanigans that Johnson can get up to, having spent eight years at City Hall when Johnson was Mayor. He provided further commentary on the situation: “Today’s unanimous ruling confirms that the Prime Minister attempted to subvert democracy in order to push through a disastrous no-deal Brexit without Parliamentary scrutiny.
“The Prime Minister has serious questions to answer. With our country at an unprecedented crossroads, we must keep all the necessary checks and balances in place.”
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There is another possible interpretation of these events, based on the “playbook” which Trump follows and which Rees-Mogg and Johnson seem to be using too. Given, of course, that before Trump these two were already acting out exaggerated fictional characters: Rees-Mogg as Lord Snooty and Johnson as Dennis the Menace.
Johnson has apparently based his appeal on overgrown comic characters who see no reason to grow up. Instead relying on charm to get forgiveness for their always outrageous behaviour. He is the cheeky rule-breaker. The friend with apparently unlimited eff-off money to tell the powerful boss what we think. Prime Ministers of Ruritania (or Luxembourg). Johnson’s behaviour appears to signal: “who cares?”
As for a bunch of judges, won’t some people find them just another aspect of fuddy-duddyness that needs a rude gesture?
Earlier today I tweeted a quote from the Irish writer Fintan O’Toole – from his latest book Heroic Failure: Brexit and the Politics of Pain:
“On Desert Island Discs in October 2005 … in a rare moment of self-reflection, Johnson spoke of the pleasure of making trouble that motivated his mendacity: ‘so everything I wrote from Brussels, I found was sort of chucking these rocks over the garden wall and I listened to this amazing crash from the greenhouse next door over in England as everything I wrote from Brussels was having this amazing, explosive effect on the Tory party, and it really gave me this I suppose rather weird sense of power’. ”
Which led me to tweet some doggerel
Boris thought he should
And as PM thought he could.
But the Supreme Court said he couldn’t
So legally he douldn’t.
For Brexiteers, though Boris is
still the man of the hour
Chucking rocks at greenhouses
For “a weird sense of power”.