Yellowhammer is not news and the Court of Sessions will presumably be overruled

The British political crisis lurches on.

Boris Johnson is already fighting an election campaign which consists of promising to take the country out of the EU on 31 October and promising to spend large amounts of money. The latter is not as bad as it might seem to conservative minded people, as borrowing money costs almost nothing and public spending is necessary to help buoy the economy when Brexit happens, if it does.

The PM will announce today that the Government will buy five new British-built Royal Navy frigates, but this is overshadowed in the news by yesterday’s Scottish court ruling that his advice to the Queen to prorogue Parliament was illegal and the publication last night of the government's Operation Yellowhammer document, forced on him by Speaker John Bercow’s procedural coup in the House of Commons and another lost vote.

Boris does not have the confidence of Parliament but he is not allowed by the House to call an election and he does not want to resign (that would mean Jeremy Corbyn as Prime Minister, an idea that would not be quite as nightmarish, immediately after he takes office, as it is now). 

The Yellowhammer paper talks of "reasonable worst case assumptions": food price rises, reduced medical supplies and even riots on the streets, if the UK leaves the EU without a deal. This is not news, as the Sunday Times leaked this document on August 18th.

John Bercow is making up the rules as he goes along – he would say to strengthen the House of Commons against the executive, but is this sufficient justification? 

His critics point out that, though he has to be politically impartial, he has said that he opposes Brexit. He is a noisy scourge of racism and sexism and I am afraid It is not possible to imagine him so helpful to a House of Commons fighting the Government in order to restrict abortion or immigration.

The Claim of Right Act 1689, which the Court of Sessions used to rule the Government’s advice to the Queen on prorogation illegal, is a document produced during the so-called Glorious Revolution, after King James II and VII had fled to France, to justify legally the  'fact on the ground', the decision by politicians to replace him with William of Orange. It had no legal validity itself beyond force majeure, but that is all you need in a revolution. It of course did not receive the royal assent since it dethroned the King. It is the Scottish equivalent of the English Bill Of Right (despite its name that is considered an Act of Parliament) and devotes most of its space to denouncing King James VII’s popery. 

It does seem that the judges are following American or European models – this is part of the Americanisation and Europeanisation of British politics. The difference between the UK and America and Europe is that we do not have a written constitution. This is why the court is straining to make a camel pass through the needle of the Claim of Right. 

I cannot believe the Supreme Court in London will uphold this ruling, but I am sure the Scottish Nationalists will make much use in the coming election of a Scottish ruling against the Conservative Government being overturned by an English court in London.

Tom Watson, the Labour Deputy Leader, has now said that the referendum result is no longer valid and a new referendum is needed. I certainly do not agree with him but he has a point, in the sense that three years have gone by and with every day the referendum's authority diminishes. 

He said something else yesterday that interests me, not because he is right but mostly because I love Joseph Conrad.

'I saw the prime minister in the division lobby before the votes this week. And he looked physically diminished. I couldn’t help thinking of that passage by Conrad in Heart of Darkness, where he describes the brute, Mr Kurtz:

'Mr. Kurtz lacked restraint in the gratification of his various lusts, that there was something wanting in him--some small matter which, when the pressing need arose, could not be found under his magnificent eloquence.

'Whether he knew of this deficiency himself I can't say. I think the knowledge came to him at last--only at the very last.

'But the wilderness had found him out early, and had taken on him a terrible vengeance for the fantastic invasion. I think it had whispered to him things about himself which he did not know, things of which he had no conception till he took counsel with this great solitude--and the whisper had proved irresistibly fascinating.

'It echoed loudly within him because he was hollow at the core.'