Blog 2023 Malcolm Blair-Robinson

We seem about to embark on a peculiar and entirely unnecessary democratic conflict which pits parliament against the people. But that is itself impossible because parliament IS the people. It is the only part of the whole structure of central government which is elected by the people, who send their representatives to Westminster to protect their interests FROM the executive, which represents power vested by the Monarch from her reservoir of absolute power over everything.

We now are undergoing a Cummings/Gove/Boris driven redefinition which makes the executive the voice of the people and parliament their adversary. This means the Monarch is for the people against the parliament, which is the people. Get your head around that. It is important because if you let it stand through our muli-tflexing constitution by creating precedent for the future, you will remove democratic power from the people. Instead they will vest power in whoever is successful in grabbing it.

One wonders if Downing Street knows what it is doing. I very much fear it does know exactly.

The much vaunted Number Ten machine, made up of No Deal and Brexit fundamentalists,  who believe themselves invincible, has suffered a catastrophic set of reverses. It has bust their brand, showed Johnson to be useless, handed control of the Commons to an unlikely alliance, which includes former Tories kicked out in a tantrum, led by the Leader of the Opposition who has run rings round the bumbling prime minister. Boris is now boxed in with no way out. Yet this nerve wracked administration, which loves spectacular gestures and grand political theatre, might once again gobsmack the world next week.

Suppose, as expected, Johnson loses his bid for an immediate election. This means he is obliged by law to do lots of stuff he has promised never to do (he would rather be dead in a ditch; a light hearted statement but suggesting a wild mind in freefall). So is there a get out of gaol card? Literally as legal teams are assembling to send him to prison if he disobeys the law.

Yes. He resigns and advises the Queen to send for Corbyn.

What happens after that is even more fun. But you will have to wait for the next installment.  Watch this space.

Apparently the young Boris Johnson, I am not certain how young, when asked what he wanted to be when he grew up, aimed high and replied World King. Well PM of GB is the closest he will get to his ambitious fantasy. Six weeks in and four days into his first encounter of parliament as prime minister, his entire government’s game plan is in chaos, his party has burst asunder, his government has morphed in a very short time from happy energetic ambitious and full of hope to  angry, vindictive, incompetent and divisive. It has lost its majority, lost its agenda and lost its way. Moreover he cannot actually govern. He is visibly fumbling and widely accepted as untrustworthy and a liar.

So much for the reign of the World King. It may not last long.

After what appeared to be a promising start, Boris has turned out to be what so many claimed he was, egocentric, shallow, unable to seek consensus, bullying and divisive. In other words an appalling prime minister. His whole game plan is in ruins and his government paralysed by an opposition alliance led by Corbyn, much derided by Boris, which has outplayed and outwitted him. And now he is having a tantrum and throwing his toys out of the pram. He is also throwing distinguished, loyal one nation Tories out of his, indeed their, party.

Apparently as I write this, political commentators and editors have been summoned to a ‘secret location’ to witness him make some kind of declaration directly to the people in a confection of imaginings which will try to project him as the champion of the people against a wicked parliament and a cowardly opposition which tyranises them.  What a complete fiasco for what is supposed to be a government, leaving the world gobsmacked. Meanwhile his negotiations with the EU, which he claims are on track towards a deal, are, according to insiders non-existent.  The EU’s lead negotiator described them as ‘in a state of paralysis’.

That the prime minister is a liar and untrustworthy is now accepted as a political fact of life. Our country and our now threatened Union deserve better that this. The Tory party has put us here. It has a lot to answer for.

At first it looked quite good. A decisive, focused government, a prime minister with a mission, willing to take control and make decisions, a charm offensive at the G7, positive noises around Europe and the promise to listen by the EU, to any new GB proposals on the backstop and not least, the proclamation by Boris of the end of austerity. So what has gone wrong?

A lot. But first we must remind ourselves that Downing Street is now in the clutches of the same gang who ran the Leave campaign and won it on a fraudulent prospectus full of headlines which were a combination of outright lies, wishful thinking and promises which could never be delivered. It is the ambiguity of this victory which lies at the heart of the present national crisis. The disingenuous character of Boris Johnson and his backers has in a few short weeks created an unprecedented atmosphere of distrust in the intentions of the executive. Today we learn that the negotiations with the EU over a backstop replacement, which the government keeps talking about, are not actually happening and the promised proposals from Boris & Co have never been submitted to the EU. So the centrepiece of the Brexit policy is apparently a spoof.

Promises not to suspend parliament, then doing so in a deft political manoeuvre, backfired to be seen as an assault on democracy, a definition which has taken hold in the public imagination. Threats to kick out of his  party lifelong grandees who do not share the Boris view of the way forward, have caused hurt and upset, but above all anger. Escorting a treasury adviser from Downing Street by armed police on the instructions of Boris’s fixer were for many the last straw.

All this and more has done what nearly three years of argument and debate in the commons has failed to do. It has brought together all parties of the opposition, including an important minority of the Tory party, in a united way forward to thwart the government’s plans. This has inaugurated what amounts to a political civil war. The first battle takes place later today. A lot, perhaps everything, depends on who wins.