Is Boris King Charles I or II?

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ir John Major spoke on the Today programme last week about the evils of proroguing parliament. It would be, he said, the first time since Charles I that such an abomination was perpetrated, with civil war the outcome. Those who make eager use of historical analogies are rarely exact in their grasp of the past. The last time parliament was prorogued to get a government measure through was in 1948, during the premiership of the sainted Clement Attlee – a less spine-chilling example, if Sir John had been aware of it.

At various moments in our history, parliament has been treated rather – shall we say, cavalierly? – by governments when it tried to obstruct change. The
Great Reform Act was only passed when William IV overcame procedural obstruction in the Commons by going in person to dissolve parliament and then he promised to create as many peers as necessary to overcome the Lords. The same threat was used in 1911 to change the constitution in the Parliament Act. Attlee’s prorogation was carried out for the same reason.

What about Charles I? He was under attack from religious fundamentalists in parliament who were trying to foist their ideas on the country. It was they who were largely responsible for the worst civil conflict in our history. The same MPs, sadder and wiser, were brought back in 1660 to vote on the restoration of the monarchy, having become the most unpopular parliament in history: “Boys do now cry ‘Kiss my parliament’ instead of ‘Kiss my a---’,” noted Samuel Pepys.

So writes my quondam supervisor Dr Robert Tombs in today's Sunday Telegraph (the best English Sunday paper by a country mile).

Dr David Starkey, a telly Don who can be tiresome but is often right, compares Boris Johnson to the priapic King Charles II here.