The current session of the British Parliament, a corpse which the
supreme court has now resurrected, has been longer than any other in its history, which begins in 1707, and
longer than any session of any English Parliament except the Long Parliament.
The Long Parliament could not be prorogued
because it made war against the monarch, whose prerogative prorogation is, or
was until the day before yesterday.
Parliament eventually killed him.
There is a lot of talk of violence now, though for the time
being it is humbug.
In the last very painful months of Theresa May's premiership, Parliament had
almost nothing to do. Every so often
some local bill of utter inconsequence would be debated to break the tedium.
Parliament has even less to do now. It has nothing to do in fact, but it will sit from now
until no-one knows when.
The Speaker is now in control of the Order Paper and presumably there will be a
succession of emergency questions. Poor Boris Johnson was forced to fly back to England, after addressing the UN wittily on AI, and stand in
the House answering questions last night for hours, from every MP who wanted to ask one.
One cannot imagine Churchill or Macmillan in his shoes, but when they prorogued Parliament it stayed prorogued.
One thing is certain. The story in the Sunday Times about Boris improperly helping an attractive blonde friend when he was Mayor of London, which had made remarkably little impact, will be discussed a lot. It is utterly trivial by French standards, but certainly not by British ones.
Weeks of this will fray tempers and they are very frayed
already.
It reminds me of the long hot summer of 1914: suffragette
outrages (of which Theresa May approves), long strikes and what would have culminated in
civil war in Ireland, with Tory leaders committing treason and siding with the
Unionist rebels against the Liberal government.
Instead, Princip killed the Archduke Francis Ferdinand.
What is most striking today is first the anger towards Boris Johnson directed by his opponents inside and outside his party, especially in the left of centre papers, Politico, Sky News and the BBC.
And second
the way in which accusations of encouraging violence are frequently a tactic
used against the right.
The Tony Blair Institute for Global Change has already suggested that it should
be illegal to claim that white people are being replaced by non-whites. They did so because this is what the suspect in the Christchurch massacres believes.
The third striking thing is how often the tactic of invoking a victim group is used,
in last night’s case women. This is an incessant tactic of the left, which the right now copies too.
Boris is always an enjoyable speaker, unlike his
predecessor, but PMQs became boring in the end and I stopped watching. But not before Boris Johnson livened it up and aroused genuine, not synthetic, fury when he dismissed Mrs. Paula Sheriff’s fear of violence
as “humbug”.
She began her question by saying
I absolutely do not want to close
down robust debate
and then went on to argue that it should be closed down and
words like 'surrender' should not be used.
'Surrender'.
Her desire not to encourage violence and hatred sounded heartfelt but the word humbug came unbidden into my mind too, before the
Prime Minister used it.
If you disagree that it's humbug please click here and you will see that it is.
Parliament is exactly the place for robust debate. Another sort of politics, consensual, more feminine, in which MPs are bureaucrats, is what they have in Europe. It goes with powerful judges using constitutional law to rule against governments.
Mr Johnson’s attacks on parliament and use of the
phrase “surrender act” fifteen times was intended to cause an uproar.
He
was trolling, if trolling means saying something you believe in a way calculated
to cause maximum offence. This is something
he has in common with President Trump.
The intention is that the public will see Boris as the only
man who can deliver Brexit and side with him against Parliament and judges, always
two of the least popular institutions in the land.
But will they? So far Dominic Cummings' plans have not worked out as he expected, though getting rid of hardcore Remain MPs may yet do so.
A poll in the Daily Mail finds most voters think Johnson
should apologise to the Queen and more than half of Tory voters think Mr
Johnson should quit. The same poll, however, shows him far more popular than
Jeremy Corbyn and his party set to win a clear majority at the election.
The PM will try to pass a motion today allowing a three-day recess
for the Tory conference next week, but if this is refused he may prorogue
Parliament again. I hope he does.
My wish for Parliament to be prorogued till 1 November
would have caused the Attorney General, Geoffrey Cox, to have resigned, so he told
us yesterday. (Anyway, the Northern Ireland Executive Formation Act 2019 made it impossible.)
Geoffrey Cox gave a wonderful speech, unrepentant about the purported prorogation, very combative, highly intelligent.
Best of all he looks and sounds like a Tory.
A future Prime Minister, I hope.
I am very sorry indeed to say that Boris is not a very truthful man, but I think he will keep his word and not ask for an extension to Britain's membership of the EU.
That means he will resign in favour of Jeremy Corbyn.
It is the strategy of A.J. Balfour in 1905, which went disastrously wrong for Balfour, whose party was swept away in the biggest landslide of the 20th century.
It could end disastrously for Boris too.
Or it might work.
The stakes could not be higher.
(This article was published in Conservative Woman.)