Tuesday 24 September 2019

Now what does Boris do?

Boris Johnson, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, has been found guilty of an unawful act by 11 judges on the UK Supreme Court, the highest court in the land. This is deadly serious stuff. It's unprecedented. It's resignation stuff. It's fall of government stuff. It's being shackled and taken to the Tower of London stuff. Or is it? Trump has shown the way. He has stuffed the US Supreme Court with right-wingers who hold the balance of legal power and he normally gets what he wants from the judges when justices lower down the scale in district courts dare to find against him on his favourite policies, like on immigration and border walls. But in this country judges are not political appointments. They are judges through and through and the Supreme Court in its wisdom has ruled unanimously that Prime Minister Boris acted unlawfully by suspending parliament for five weeks, allegedly to prepare for the government's future policy agenda but really to stop MPs poking their noses into his Brexit affairs and trying to stop him from taking the UK out of the EU on October 31 without a deal. There is no one else Boris can appeal to, unless of course he turns to the European Court of Justice hahahaha! So should he resign? Will he resign? The judges, led by the sombre Lady Hale, effectively said Boris had lied to the Queen. In other words he and his merry men told Her Majesty that they needed to prorogue parliament to prepare for the Queen's Speech ceremony on October 14 when the monarch reads out the government's parliamentary agenda for the next session. It's true, parliament has been suspended before for this very reason. But never for FIVE weeks. Boris told the Queen a fib. So surely he must resign to save the monarchy? Well no. Boris is made of different stuff. He's an Etonian. He won't back down because he thinks he is right to have done what he did. Before the Supreme Court judgment he said he wouldn't resign if he lost and I assume therefore that he won't resign. But lots of politicians are calling for him to do so, especially Jeremy Corbyn who can at last feel the smell of power in his nostrils. Boris can't ignore the ruling by the Supreme Court which, incidentally, was a foregone conclusion. So I guess parliament will return immediately. But then what? Will Corbyn put forward a vote of no confidence in the Boris government? Will he dare to do that if there is a chance he will lose the vote? Boris is going to hang on and on until he reaches that deadline of October 31. He will get his deal with the EU, parliament will approve. There will be a general election soon after and Labour will be demolished. Then Boris, assuming he wins the election and not the Liberal Democrats or the Nigel Farage Brexit Party, will look back to today and think to himself, the Supreme Court ruling was not such a big deal after all. But I'm not ready yet to put money on any of the above predictions.

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