A Dangerous Lame Duck
A Boris Johnson enters into the twilight of his premiership, his alternative history once again puts the rule of law in danger.
The January 6 hearings in America are giving us an insight into power and, in particular, what happens when leaders begin to realise that power is seeping away from them. The picture being painted of Donald Trump is that of a self-absorbed egomaniac whose confidence in his own popularity meant he was willing to do anything to cling onto power.
Boris Johnson is not Donald Trump but we saw enough of the former U.S. president in Johnson’s resignation speech to be slightly concerned: never really saying that he was resigning and a seeming refusal to accept that he had lost the confidence of his inner cohort.
Fortunately or unfortunately, our Donald Trump is much close to Alan Partridge.
As we enter the dying, lame duck months of the Johnson premiership, we will be subjected to a lot more of this. The phrase “get Brexit done” will be bandied around as if it is 2019 all over again and Tory MPs will continue to talk about levelling up with half an eye looking towards the next general election.
It also means that Johnson and his acolytes in the press will also continue to attack his perceived enemies and we got a preview of that yesterday in his opening speech of the no confidence vote.
Claims that the prime minister “saw off” Lady Hale are both wrong and dangerous. Hale is not the ‘remoaner’ that Johnson thinks she is. The former President of the Supreme Court may have found against the government on a number of occasions but that is only because the government consistently refused to act in accordance with the law.
The speech in the House of Commons last night only confirmed why Johnson should leave sooner rather than later. He is not interested in the proper exercise of of the position he holds. Reports that he was planning a party instead of attending a COBRA meeting about the heatwave were reminiscent of ministers failing to attend committee meetings. The whole cabinet has given up and started their holiday early.
Instead Johnson like the status of being prime minister and the kudos that brings. Ironically these lame duck months are exactly what Johnson always wanted the job to entail. He gets to fly around in a fighter jet without really having to face up to any responsibilities.
Unfortunately this continues to do damage to our democracy and the rule of law. There is a well established convention that judges are not criticised in Parliament in order to preserve the independence of the judiciary as a separate branch of government. Throwing that convention to the side for the sake of surviving a no confidence vote is the sort of thing that opens the door to the infamous ‘Enemies of the People’ headline.
But Johnson is happy to fiddle while Rome burns.
This week on the podcast we discussed why questions of evidence so rarely make it to the Supreme Court.
Episode link: http://uklawweekly.com/2022-uksc-19/
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Marcus