Ah yes, the ‘liberal elite’ , isn’t this the global catch-phrase of the illiberal elite (the monied class, folk like Farage, Kochs, BoJo himself) who only have the best interests of the hoi-polloi at heart?
16
I entertain myself with the imagery of HRH calling a family meeting: "They've totally stuffed it up. We are taking back control."
I know she can't, but I'm sure there are mb any currently wishing she would...
4
What kind of advice did Tony Blair give the queen before the Iraq War?
Was it the same "slam dunk" intel that George Tenet had?
The power to declare war, just like the power to prorogue Parliament, is still in the Royal Prerogative after all.
6
We are not amused.
6
Good, about time to disrupt this out of touch system
4
Very sad. I think the queen should have been stronger. Johnson should be ashamed.
1
And so, in conclusion, in two of the world's oldest democracies, we have a Prime Minister lying to the queen and a president lying about a weather forecast.
What next? Dare I even ask?
16
As prime minister he couldn't handle the situation, so he ran to Mama for help, how pathetic is that?
1
I want the queen to step up and boss her country.
2
A thought provoking article. But why does the queen carry a purse in her own home??
5
Powers of 93 year old Queen Elizabeth II:
• The power to appoint & dismiss the Prime Minister
• The power to appoint & dismiss other ministers.
• The power to summon, prorogue & dissolve Parliament
• The power to make war & peace
• The power to command the armed forces of the UK
• The power to regulate the Civil Service
• The power to ratify treaties
• The power to issue passports
• The power to create peers (both life & hereditary peers)
• The power to appoint bishops & archbishops of the Church of England
Other Queenly Do's and Don'ts:
• If the Queen pleases, she can ride in a horse carriage down Rotten Row, where others can only ride horseback.
• Her picture will appear on postage stamps, but she will not need them; her personal mail is franked.
• She can drive as fast as she likes in a car, which needs no license number.
• She can confer Britain’s highest civilian decoration, the Order of Merit—one honor in which the Sovereign retains freedom of choice.
• What Her Majesty cannot do is vote.
• Nor can she express any shading of political opinion in public.
• The Queen cannot sit in the House of Commons, although the building is royal property.
• She addresses the opening session of each Parliament, but she cannot write her own speech.
• The Queen cannot refuse to sign a bill of Parliament, & she cannot appear as a witness in court, or rent property from her subjects.
Nice life, if you can get it!
4
"Lied to the Queen"--surely that can't be equated with "and the queen fell for everything Boris said 'cause he's so cute." Do give her some credit--she's dealt with Prince Philip's malapropisms (to put it kindly) plus his affairs plus his not-so-long-ago car crash--not to mention the "annus horribilis" and the stuff she probably has managed to keep quiet. I bet she doesn't suffer fools.
http://www.thecriticalmom.blogspot.com
This is all nonsense. The Queen is a rubber stamp for the Government in power. And the Scottish Court ruling will simply be ignored.
6
I think the queen has seen it all and will have no problem with this blip.
1
The Supreme Court could simply rule that the case for a longer parliamentary break than customary was inadequately supported considering the circumstances of the Brexit situation without addressing any questions of intent.
What a surprise? Johnson lied? No! He'll say anything, like trump, to get his way. Remember how so many more hospitals were going to get built because of Brexit. Yeah, tight.
6
In an earlier comment I suggested that a country where the court system enforces a procedure where a monarch must be appropriately advised in order to assent to the actions of elected officials cannot call itself a democracy--like the UK and Canada. Several of our Canadian friends reacted angrily to the idea that Canada was a monarchy and not a democracy.
So let me amplify my position with an example. In 2008, Prime Minister Stephen Harper (a problematic leader, but elected nonetheless) decided to "prorogue" (temporarily dissolve) Parliament. Harper was completely within his rights under Canadian law to seek to do so, although his motives were clearly political, as often happens in a democracy.
But Canadian law requires the Queen to assent to such actions, and so Harper had to go on bended knee to the negotiate with the Queen's representative, the Governor General of Canada, to take that legal action. Although the Governor General ultimately allowed Harper to prorogue Parliament, she was very clear in publicly stating her powers and the powers of the Canadian monarch, "I was in a position where I could have said no ... And the decision had really to, in my mind, to be in the best interests, really, of the country, looking at all of the circumstances. And I have no regrets."
So sorry to you Canadians who feel insulted, if you live in a country where your Queen gets to ultimately decide what is in the best interests of your country, you don't live in a democracy.
6
@Chuck French
Any Canadian who thinks they live in a democracy has never participated in politics, the legal profession or public service.
All public servants at the manager/director level are required to swear an oath to the Queen.
The same is true for every single person that is naturalized.
Yes, they are made to swear allegiance to the monarchy. Not to the Canadian constitution or Canadian laws, but to the monarch.
As a Canadian I do not feel insulted, but it certainly rubs me the wrong way when people claim that the monarchy is just a symbolic thing, a quirk of history. If that's all it was, then people would be free to have a choice in the oath, just like they have the freedom in court to swear on something other than the Bible.
6
As a historian, I would like to point out that the monarch whose attempts to rule without parliament led to the English Civil War and the (temporary) abolition of the monarchy was not James II but Charles I (ruled 1625-1649). Many of the critics of Johnson's prorogation of Parliament have compared it to Charles I's dealing with the Long Parliament.
Charles's son James II (ruled 1685-1689) was overthrown in the "Glorious Revolution" of 1689, which established a constitutional monarchy.
21
'In a television interview this week, one government minister, Kwasi Kwarteng, said repeatedly that “many people are saying that the judges are biased,”'
Many people are saying that some Russia-conned Brits now bamboozled by Boris' bluster are following Trump right down the rabbit hole. Happy trails.
5
@withfeathers Kwasi Kwarteng choosing his words carefully there. Kwarteng is a neoliberal zealot who is up to his eyeballs in the systematic undermining of both the judiciary and the legislature since their tame tabloid the Daily Mail splashed ENEMIES OF THE PEOPLE on its front page over pictures of the senior judges who had thwarted the plan to take the Brexit process out of Parliament's control. Now he and his friends are complaining about an unfavourable judgement from the Scottish Court of Session, which few people south of the border have heard of but which ranks equally with the High Court of England and Wales. Not only a shot at the presumed bias of judges in general but with a suggestion that a Scottish court is just a provincial irritation.
British judges are not elected or appointed by politicians and that's the way we like it; we don't want the executive to pick the judges that give them their own way. There's a growing sense that senior British politicians would like the judiciary to be reorganised to make their lives easier, as is happening in Poland, Hungary and certain other countries. It will be a dismal day when they are allowed to get away with it.
10
@Rosalind Mitchell
Perhaps you should remember that Scotland's independence movement has only grown.
There's not a hint of iron in their objections to Brexit while they themselves advocated for decades to split from Westminster.
1
My understanding is that a slight majority of the British people (4%) passed Brexit because of immigration. With the open borders of the EU, a huge number of eastern Europeans have moved to Britain. A British commenter here on the NYT's informed me yesterday that Britain can pass more restrictive immigration laws, but only with the consent of the EU.
We are also struggling with massive immigration from Central America and we don't have a solution. We already have an estimated 15 million illegal workers. The U.N. estimates that there are now 70 million people trying to immigrate somewhere. I was all for globalization when Bill Clinton said it would be great for America. Bush 43 was a globalist and Obama was a globalist. For 24 years we had presidents in favor of globalization and now the working class has rebelled an elected a lunatic as president. I still think globalization is great because we are stealing all the scientists and high tech people from all over the world. I lived for 33 years in Austin and there are tens of thousands of Ph.Ds from China, India, and everywhere, which is great. But 10 million more people with little or no education is a burden. They can't all pick fruits and vegetables.
6
@Westcoast Texan
80% of nursing homes in the UK are privately owned and operated, in comparison to 70% of American ones.
Cheap laborers are always in demand, because they don't complain about labor laws or enforce their rights.
Forget misleading just the crown. Would it not be more appropriate to observe that Boris Johnson has misled his entire country during this whole Brexit saga leading back to 2015 ? I know that it is likely easier to prosecute a man for misleading one rather than many, but at least let us acknowledge that this man is little more than a charlatan with a bad hair style.
15
Will the British people allow “ Boriszilla” to destroy the U.K. by a “No Deal Exit?”
5
Johnson, like Trump, wants to blow up his country's democracy and be dictator. No more power to the people. No more check, no more balance.
8
There is recent precedent for extraordinary action by the Queen, who dismissed the Australian government in 1975 and forced an election. I can’t help but wonder if she is considering such action now for the British government.
19
In 1975 the Australian Prime Minister could not pass financial legislation and carry on the business of government. In those circumstances he either had to resign, and allow a working administration to be formed, or call a general election. He refused to do either, and the Governor General dismissed him. Johnson as PM is able to secure the passage of financial legislation and to carry on the business of government. He is under no duty to resign, or to call an election, although he twice tried to obtain Parliamentary support for an election. Corbyn could call for a vote of no confidence, which if passed, would require Johnson to resign or to call an election. But Labour so far have not taken this step. In short, the Australian situation in 1975 is completely irrelevant, and there is no basis, or any reasonably foreseeable basis, for the Queen to dismiss Johnson, and this notion is simply in the realms of cloud cuckoo land.
2
The Governor General did. The Queen is a rubber stamp in Australia.
2
The Queen should take steps to surprise us all. She has a mind of her own, and this would be a good time to express her opinion. I can't believe that she doesn't know what damage Johnson, and his cronies, have done and will do, to her country.
83
@ChesBay The Queen can never take sides. It would destroy the monarchy.
11
@W. McMaster Now there's a thought.
8
@ChesBay I'm sure that she does know. She is, however, extremely limited in what she is able to say or do about politics in her country. The monarch no longer has any real political power in GB. The PM and Parliament does.
4
The Prime Minister is the Prime Guardian of Royal impartiality and integrity. The very fact of the Royal signature being the object of a court case is already seriously damaging the Monarchy.
4
Americans and Britons should look at the British version of the TV drama House of Cards, where fictional prime minister Francis Urquhart (FU), got into a tiff with the fictional King, who tried to act on principle against Urquhart's fascist machinations. In the story, Urquhart eventually forced the King to abdicate. This is the kind of dynamic Boris Johnson is foisting on the nation. I hope British voters get wind of this. And I hope that American voters see the danger in letting fascists rule.
9
I have no idea if British courts have been stacked the same way they’ve been here in the US. It’s been a fundamental part of the Koch brothers agenda that’s been used over several decades to remake our politics. In the 21st century our Supremes have installed our second worst president (2000) and then established that money is speech, corporations are people, closely held companies have religious rights, a Muslim ban is legal, union dues are optional, and political gerrymandering is constitutional. They may shortly rule the president’s administration is immune from congressional oversight, or essentially neuter oversight by endless judicial dithering.
If a comparable effort hasn’t yet taken place across the pond, and if British courts impede the conservative agenda, then court packing won’t be far behind, no matter what happens with Brexit. Once you can run to the courts to get reliably conservative rulings, you can get the necessary rulings to fill in the gaps left behind by long cherished customs. And why trouble the queen if Tories can rule Britannia.
13
‘Good faith’, which democracies on both sides of the Atlantic had assumed as a foundation underlying the rule of law, is precisely what has been lacking, particularly in Boris Johnson.
8
This is what naturally happens when Trump's mini-me became PM of GB.
8
Paraphrasing Groucho Marx — 'The Constitution flies out the door when demagoguery comes innuendo.'
2
No side in this saga has any credibility, least of all the UK and EU press which has become blatantly partisan. What this article omits is the extent to which the Speaker of the House of Commons has himself cast off the wig of impartiality in favor of outright partisanship.
Bercow's decision to allow "evaluative" amendments to Standing Orders, was a semantic weasel. Nothing in Erskine-May (Parliament's procedural bible) allows for such a thing.
His personal excoriation of Johnson two days ago, while still Speaker, was unprecedented. His statement that he he is prepared to allow “additional procedural creativity” to enable parliament to block Johnson from "ignoring the law" was the height of hypocrisy given that "procedural creativity is a euphemism for "irregularity."
His statement at the close of Parliament that he had promised his wife to resign by 2017 but somehow managed not to but rather allowed himself to be re-elected Speaker but six weeks ago, points to one thing only: he stayed on simply to facilitate the Remainers' gambits.
No one is coming out of this very well, except the Queen who is not "in" it and Nigel Farage who is at least consistent and forthright in his demagoguery. But whatever irregularities Johnson may have committed, the impression should not be allowed that Bercow has been the paragon of guileless virtue.
4
I am an American.
The Queen is an adult who can make her own decisions.
I was very surprised she agreed to suspend Parliament and think it was probably the dumbest decision of her life.
There is no going backward over bad decisions.
2
@Bert Gold
The queen is a figurehead. She has to go along with the premier's decisions. Even her yearly speech from the throne is written by the prime minister and she has to read it word for word.
1
Not only was the Kremlin deeply involved in Brexit, this divide & conquer strategy is typical of US Republican consultant firm of George Birnbaum & the late Arthur Finkelstein which has history with Nixon, Netanyahu, Orban & many, many Republican/right wing candidates in the US and other would-be authoritarians around the globe.
David Cameron used Jim Messina in his campaign. Is Johnson working with Birnbaum?
2
Time for Boris to go. Two hundred years ago misleading the Sovereign would have been High Treason with a particularly gruesome death to follow conviction. Her Majesty should dissolve the Government and take the reigns until new elections are held.
2
Boris Johnson showed he could not win in parliament, so he decided to do away with it for a while...but all he is doing is postponing failure. He has been an incompetent Prime Minister, and a hopeless Brexit negotiator. The slim Brexit majority was fueled by lies and prejudice and many of its previous supporters are now feeling duped. Johnson does not have the country at his back. He doesn't have the votes in Parliament. He does not even have common sense on his side. Johnson and Brexit are a lose-lose proposition for the UK.
128
I’m beginning to think a monarchy isn’t potentially so bad an after all. QEII abdicates, Charles likewise, and William and Harry gather the Palace Guard and the Beefeaters and march on Westminster. They suspend Parliament, get things straightened out, then cede power back. Unlikely? Probably. But that’s as likely to work as what’s going on right now.
1
The one person I kept thinking of in reading this piece is Steve Bannon, whose soul ambition has been to "deconstruct the administrative state".
They say success breeds success. Wildly successful in his endeavors here, he and BoJo took the show across the pond. Let us hope the grand finale to Bannon and BoJo's Excellent Adventure is cancellation and gobs of rotten tomatoes - on both sides of the Atlantic.
8
I am against a monarchy in a Democracy but there maybe a use after all to put the brakes on a Prime Minister gone rogue. I am also glad to see a non-politicized Court trying to stop a Prime Minister who is abusing his powers and trying to mislead the people. I wish there was a check here on Presidential powers. There is but the checks have been neutralized by the monopoly of one Party dominance of two of the branches of Government. Without the checks, our country is on the road to disaster.
8
We replaced a monarchy with "we the people" in this country.
The head of the British government may have lied to the monarch. Fact-checkers find that the head of our government lies regularly to "we the people."
I admire that there is even the possibility of the British court system addressing the importance of a truthful elected leader for a government to function. I wish we had the same protection here.
13
The Queen as more personal advisors and handlers that the President of the United States. The Palace knew exactly what the fledgling PM was to present at the meeting. The Palace knows that the Brexit agony had to be brought to an end. A further continuance of the Brexit melodrama will only tear the UK apart and further the embarrassment of this country in the eyes of the world.
“All of these powers are technically available to the (president), but our Constitution works on the basis that they won’t be abused.”
Abuse of powers is little different than acting in bad faith.
2
Grown up countries do not need unelected, hereditary headmen. May we all live to hear of the fall of the monarchy.
1
Some of this debate seems all too tatty, particularly the populist accusation that a judgement by the High Court consistent with the Court's constitutional authority reflects "elite" interference. But I'm genuinely confused by the argument that "a prime minister’s advice to the queen on a question like this is a matter of politics, not law, and forbidden territory for the courts." If the law requires that the PM obtain the Queen's permission for a given action and if he then uses her permission to shut down an essential institution of state governance, how can his false statements that gained this permission be considered merely a "matter of politics"? Making false statements to state authorities is a crime, no? And the effect was not "political" in the sense of party politics but rather was institutional, disabling as a whole the highest deliberative body of a democracy. Can someone explain this "politics/forbidden territory" argument a bit better?
5
A brief guide:
US: "elevator"
UK: "lift"
US: "semi-trailer"
UK: "lorry"
US: "Donald Trump"
UK: "Boris Johnson"
52
As a reader, this piece leaves a lot of unanswered questions from an editorial standpoint.
This could have used more precise editing and exposition for audiences unfamiliar with the colloquial political, legal and governmental conventions in the UK.
8
@BothSides
Specifically? I'm really, unsarcastically, asking. Mainly because someone should come along who can answer your questions.
For my part, I thought they did a pretty good job and have literally no idea which part is unclear. Being a terrible nerd and one of *those* kids, I've been obsessed with Parliament since I was 5 (joy to raise), so I might just honestly be missing the missing information.
1
@BothSides
I agree. For example, what is “the government”, if not Parliament?
@Susan The government is formed, after a general election, usually from the party that has won the most seats in the House of Commons (Parliament or House of Representatives of the People). The leader of the biggest party usually becomes Head of Government, the Prime Minister.
The seats won by the other parties are the Loyal Opposition (they literally sit opposite the government - which is what we need here!), in which the biggest opposition party forms a shadow government.
The government proposes legislation which is debated and voted on in the House of Commons.
The Prime Minister has a cabinet of ministers who were elected to sit in the House of Commons as MP's. There are no members of the cabinet who are not also MP's.
So the government is formed from the MP's in Parliament, and the opposition keeps a check on executive power.
The UK has very strong separation of powers which have worked quite well. There is a strong independent judiciary, a sitting government with a loyal opposition, and non-executive Head of State who is constitutionally bound and remains in that position by the pleasure of the people.
What we see in the UK now is a fight between the government (who cannot form a majority) and an opposition determined to keep the government in check (which is its job!).
The end result will likely be a decision from the Supreme Court that the government has been naughty!
4
Clearly societies cannot function with expectations of conventions in the absence of written rules. The US demonstrates it, and now Britain is too. The whole basis of US exceptionalism, as I was taught by a very right wing history professor, was that parties came together to keep the government working when it was designed to grind to a halt. Mitch McConnell and before him Paul Ryan and worse have demonstrated that they are perfectly fine w/ letting the government collapse and citizens be damned.
57
I hereby move to proclaim a Sovereign of these United States, invested with the power to summarily remove an unfit or uncouth President as she sees fit, via downward pointing of the thumb.
(Who would our Royal be? Oprah? Gaga?)
9
@Mr. P Michelle Obama would scald a few tailfeathers as Royalty, we already know her husband is fit for such as No Drama Obama had a clean Cabinet and Staff, knew the basic rules and regulations as well as the expected duties of his job, and he DID Them, to his fullest as well as be as honest as he could, to such a degree that our present officeholder cannot even come close to being as competent at as the most recent holder of same.
8
@B. Honest
I was going to suggest coronating RBG I, but I think I like your idea better.
I’ve always been impressed how the British have managed its democracy for so long with both written laws and conventional behavior, but it doesn’t take a behavioral scientist to recognize that adherence to convention is a dying political characteristic - another example of a liberal democracy in crisis.
19
Courts on both sides of the Atlantic are having to decide whether an executive's power rests on law or is the absolute possession of the executive alone.
Saying that it rests on law, but allowing the executive alone to decide what the law is in that regard, amounts to giving power to the executive alone.
To retain the rule of law, courts have to be able to declare that the executive is violating the law, even when the executive disagrees.
65
I would question the claim that the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 (the "2011 law [that] barred prime ministers from calling elections whenever they wanted") in fact "stymied Mr Johnson in the Brexit fight". While it's true that it prevents him from unilaterally calling an election as he's wanted to do recently, it's worth noting that the FTPA has saved Conservative prime ministers far more than it has hindered them.
Had it not been in place, Theresa May would have lost office three times over at the very least; the pre-FTPA convention was that a government defeat on a matter of confidence (including major bills such as the withdrawal agreement) would trigger a resignation and likely a general election. Johnson, too, would have been forced out upon his loss on the no-deal vote. But the terms of the FTPA made both May's government and Johnson's far more stable than they deserved, despite lacking a working majority (or, in the case of Johnson, any majority at all).
In short, while the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 may have reassigned one important power from the government to Parliament, it also greatly strengthened the position of the prime minister, and over the past three years the ability to retain office despite swingeing legislative defeat has been far more of a boon than the loss of the ability to freely call elections has been a detriment.
20
I have often been confounded by the notion that a seemingly modern country can find the concept of a hereditary monarchy a rational form of government.
But then I need only look at Pennsylvania Avenue.
13
I simply do not understand why the British people love their monarchy so much. All that money spent on them, when it could be going to far better causes. They are the world's biggest welfare recipients.
16
Ask a Swede, Norwegian, Dane, Dutch, Spanish or Belgian the same question and you will get the same answer: continuity.
The alternative would be an 'elected monarch' as they do have in republics like Finland, Iceland and Germany. However, that will probably cost the same and add another layer of political games and controversy. Not to mention that the British Royal family brings in tons of tourism. It is not like Trump does the same for the United States.
30
@Joanna Stelling
Don't they generate more money than they take via tourism?
8
No, I would say that the Republican Congress is the worlds biggest welfare group. High salaries for doing NOTHING for Americans
They demonstrate their corruption every day they are in session. Getting ready to vote!
44
It should absolutely shocking to Americans to contemplate that the United Kingdom actually is what it claims to be, a monarchy, just like Canada. Britons and Canadians can claim forever that they are a democracy, but they are not. An unelected sovereign is the head of their government, by royal descent, and in the final analysis the government answers to the sovereign, and not the people. The prorogement scandal that is now brewing in the UK is exactly the same as happened in Canada in 2009 when Stephen Harper had to grovel to the same queen to dismiss the Canadian parliament, with all the same arguments appearing in the press.
In addition, no bill passed by a "representative" parliament in the UK or Canada can become law without royal assent. And in Canada, in recent history the sovereign has actually refused royal assent of bills it did not like. Nor can a government be formed without the assent of the king or queen, and if a person like Donald Trump, deemed unfit and unclean by the political elites, were "elected" in the UK, certain parties would clamor for the queen to prevent him from forming a government under that principle.
You can't call your nation a democracy if ultimately an old lady and her assorted family of misbehaving social divas gets to watch over and override the moves of the government.
12
@Chuck French Thanks, I needed a good laugh.
12
Splitting hairs here as there isn’t one flavor of democracy that fits every culture and time.
Younger democracies can equally point to the following “oddities” in our republican model:
1. Electors of the electoral college determining who wins Presidential elections plus the fact they can vote their conscience and disregard the laws of assigning electoral college votes of their states.
2. Gerrymandering by dominant parties in a geographical area to ensure voter suppression of portions of the electorate that will not vote for them.
3. The Supreme Court’s decision to treat money as free speech ensuring that only a small segment of our electorate wield disproportionate influence over elections.
I’m sure there are many more but these big three stink the worst.
Yet, we strive to make *our* flavor of democracy work for us and inch closer (no matter how slowly) to a more perfect union.
29
@Chuck French
And yet somehow six of the ten highest-ranked countries on the Economist's Democracy index are constitutional monarchies (and QEII is the monarch of three of them) and the UK sits at 14th place to the US's 25th.
The UK is a representative democracy and the Monarch plays a purely ceremonial role. The 20th and 21st centuries in the UK have seen serious (although admittedly not always successful - see FPTP voting) democratic reforms which have not been mirrored by the US. We might have a monarch, but our politics do not rest solely on electing one person every four years who seems to be subsuming all of the powers of government unto himself.
27
Maybe Queen Elizabeth should send Boris Johnson to the Tower of London to think over his decision about "proroguing" Parliament. It's the royal equivalent of the American punishment of taking him to the woodshed.
24
Johnson may have misled the Queen to further his agenda. That is irresponsible. What he has accomplished . however, is that he embarrassed the Queen. That is unforgivable.
106
@Thomas In Britain, the Monarch relies on sound advice, and there is the underlying assumption that politicians place the nation--and the Monarch--above individual gain.
Johnson broke this, should resign, and apologize to Her Majesty. And, I believe, the Queen has the ability to advise THIS P.M. that he has lost all crediblity and a new government should be formed with his resignation.
78
How do we know if Johnson lied to the Queen? He says he did not. What does the Queen have to say he said? The Queen is always well-informed on affairs of state. If he did lie to her, she was not fooled.
15
@Purple Spain But if she wasn’t fooled, that makes it worse because that would mean that she granted a request that she understood to be based on a willful falsehood.
6
If the constitution obliged the queen to approve the request to perogue, as some suggest, it would not matter if Johnson lied to her or not.
Maybe the real offense isn’t that Johnson lied to the queen but to the nation in order to exercise unfettered power.
The UK’s constitutional crisis is that it can’t figure out the where sovereign power lies. If the queen, then lying to her should be wrong and she has the power to suspend parliament. If the people are sovereign then suspending parliament would never be possible.
Waffling and straddling are not just confusing and causing conflict and dysfunction, it allows for Johnson to submit himself as the embodiment of The People’s Will as an alternative.
8
The problem with an unwritten constitution is that one needs to rely on historians and political scientists to agree what counts as a "convention".
In Johnson's prorogation of Parliament, commentators were left to make vague statements like: this is the longest prorogation in recent memory, or since WWII, etc.
Are they sure? How many long prorogations were there since the Magna Carta in 1215? And how should one interpret 800 years of Parliamentary history? If long prorogations existed for 400 years then ceased for 400 years, what is the "convention"?
Write the rules down on a piece of paper, man.
20
@Yellow Moon Profile Picture This may be what causes them to put convention into a written constitution.
2
@Yellow Moon Profile Picture
I am enjoying the discussions about UK's democracy from the USA and learning more about my own country in the process. You can make comments about the very odd things we do over here without triggering the sort of insults that now occur on UK discussion boards.
"As for 800 years of Parliamentary history."
Magna Carter is less important to us than it is to Americans.
The English Civil War in the 1640s is a better starting point for our modern parliamentary democracy, along with the Bill of Rights in 1689. Our Democracy has always been very messy and is still very much "a work in progress". I don't think it can be codified by a Constitution.
I think we may run our politics and laws more on precedent than convention. We are struggling because there is no precedent for anything like Brexit.
3
Were Boris Johnson a crafted resilient politician who would
Democratically appeal directly to the British people and argue his case, then perhaps a studied decision could be made on Brexit, pro or con.
But Johnson is a wild bully. It appears nothing will stop him from
Having his way only on Brexit. This puts British law and order in chaos, entirely too similar to Trump’s dealings here.
Both democracies feel the sting of democratic institutions being
Challenged but more importantly, threatened to the point of
Collapse.
48
And so they learned, just as us Americans learned, that if a rule isn't explicitly written down with a visible and efficient means of enforcement, it isn't really a rule that matters.
111
I beg to differ. The second amendment is written down, but look at the problems we have had with its interpretation.
37
@James Jones
Republicans (especially that rodent Steven Miller) scour every possible law for its flaws and exceptions and then use the loopholes to fuel Trump's obviously immoral, unethical and unconstitutional actions. The Heritage Society, to me one of the worst terrorist groups in this country, would like to be the arbiter of what the Founding Fathers "meant" when they wrote our Declaration and Constitution. They also read their Bible THEIR way. They do not represent American Democracy, only a shell that hides a really sick quest for authoritarian political power and suppression of democracy.
92
@Nancy It was written down and interpreted for quite some time to mean that the People do not have the right to guns-the first part of the sentence being the intent. You know, "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State...." It was 2008 when Scalia blew that up, ignoring over 200 years of precedent. The problems we have are partisan politicians influencing the Supreme Court.
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The former Conservative prime minister of Canada, Stephen Harper, suspended the Canadian Parliament more than once, specifically to avoid his government losing a vote and having to resign. The parliamentary system gives huge potential power to a prime minister. It lacks the checks-and-balances of the U.S. Constitution - not that the Republican Party has shown much interest in preserving that over the past few years.
Harper's suspensions of Parliament to avoid losing power meant that Canadians were governed for long periods of time by a one-party political system. It's an abuse of the parliamentary system.
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@Oriole and what happened to Harper? He lost office. The people judged him. The system worked exactly as intended. And Johnson will find the same.
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@Oriole True, although the Governor-General delayed the request for several hours to consult with constitutional experts "to send a message" that it was dubious. (The Queen is still the head of state of Canada and the G-G is her representative, meaning technically the Government requires leave of the Crown to dissolve and recall Parliament) Prorogation should only be available after debate and a vote in the House of Commons (in Britain and in Canada).
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@Oriole Dismissing parliament is not an inherent feature of a parliamentary system. In countries like Norway, the monarch/PM cannot dismiss the parliament. There are parliamentary elections every fourth year and that is what the MPs got to work with. If there is a vote of no confidence in the current cabinet, then the members of the Storting simply has to try to build support for a new coalition without having the people vote on it. It has helped opposing parties find compromises in difficult cases or just simply postpone debating it until the people vote in a different party composition that can support a given policy.
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