11th December 2021
Many people – including you reading this post – will have strong opinions about the prime minister Boris Johnson.
And because he is such a distinctive politician, it is tempting to attribute all the current political woes to his actions and inactions.
To an extent that is a fair approach – for almost every political problem in the United Kingdom flows from a complete failure of political leadership.
Yet.
One should not confuse the opportunist for the opportunity.
Johnson does what he (thinks he) can get away with.
This is why Johnson is perhaps not so interesting for any individual qualities, but for what his premiership tells us about the United Kingdom constitution.
Here, what we are told are not just weaknesses of the constitution – but also its strengths.
For example, the status of the Good Friday Agreement as a core constitutional instrument should be without doubt.
It continues to shape and control what London governments can and cannot do in respect of Brexit and Northern Ireland.
The reported climb-down of Brexit minister David Frost over the supposed ‘red line’ of the European Court of Justice can be attributed to the value that Ireland and the United States place on what President Joseph Biden once pleasingly called ‘the Irish Accords’.
But.
Most of what Johnson’s premiership shows about the constitution of the United Kingdom is its weaknesses.
The ease, for example, with which a prime minister can evade and frustrate checks and balances on their office.
About how the only restraint on a governing party with a majority is that ancient one of Nemesis following on from Hubris.
And about how simple it is for determined government departments to remove rights from individuals.
As this blog has previously described: the government of the United Kingdom is currently pushing forward legislation that will enable its officials to kill people without legal consequences, to prohibit meaningful protest, and to summarily remove citizenship from you because of where your family is from.
These are all things which were possible before Johnson.
In 1929, a sitting Lord Chief Justice – Hewart – published The New Despotism warning of the implication of the power of a government that controlled the legislature, for it would tend “to subordinate Parliament, to evade the Courts, and to render the will, or the caprice, of the Executive unfettered and supreme”.
In 1976, the Tory (former and future) Lord Chancellor Lord Hailsham warned of an “elective dictatorship”.
It was only what Peter Hennessy called the ‘good chaps’ theory of government that stopped a government exploiting its powers to the full.
In a way, all that has happened is that we have now finally had a prime minister and a government that – to use a current phrase – ‘does not recognise’ self-restraint.
In a way, one cannot blame Johnson – for this what he does, and probably can do no other.
More culpable are the governing party’s members and MPs who voted for Johnson in the 2019 leadership election knowing full well the nature of him as a politician.
What the rest of us now get to see is what such a politician can show us about the constitution of the United Kingdom.
And it is not an especially pretty scene.
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Dear DAG,
I do not know how many of your columns and blogs I have read over the past few years. You still haven’t call convinced me that there is any such thing as a substantive UK Constitution – as apposed to some sort of ‘system of Government’.
The NI u-turn doesn’t tell us anything about the ‘constitution’, it tells us that mice do not make the rules when caught between the cat and the dog. This was bound to happen whatever constitutional arrangements the UK pretends to have and whoever is in Downing St.
I’d be very interested to hear in a separate blog what you think would strengthen the British constitution in such a way as to guard against opportunists like Johnson. I know that you’re sceptical about the value of a written constitution, so what are the alternatives? Thanks (and also for your consistently valuable blogs…)
Second that comment. Leadership of the Conservative party is in the power of a miniscule and reactionary membership and the existing poor cohort of MPs.
The grown ups have largely been kicked out.
Other parties can’t agree an opposition strategy and there is no prospect of any form of PR being introduced.
Jeremy Cliffe writing in the New Statesman has compared the process of political handover in Germany to the UK. Civilised, tolerant and with the exception of AfD applauded by all members of the Bundestag. Impossible to imagine here.
Where would we be without Wikipedia?
“The New Despotism” seems to have united different political sides of the argument in common cause.
As ever thank you for posting and I hope you will keep it up next year.
I still hold, and have heard no arguments to the contrary, that the problem with the UK constitution is between chair and keyboard (as they say in IT).
The constitution includes the law, and the law prohibits misconduct in public office.
Almost all of the things that people are complaining about as being problems in our constitution are due to acts of misconduct.
David Cameron’s neglect of his duty to consider the consequences of making the referendum binding.
Theresa May’s neglect of her duty to consider the consequences of triggering Article 50 while the ERG had her dancing on a wire.
Almost everything that Boris Johnson does, but perhaps starting with the lies that he told, as Prime Minister to get re-elected.
All of these things are acts of criminal misconduct that ought to be prosecuted.
If anyone here is tired of hearing me say this, please do suggest how I am wrong about it.
CPS guidance here:
https://www.cps.gov.uk/legal-guidance/misconduct-public-office#_Toc519523916
Is this what a constitutional crisis looks like, nowadays?
Johnson is a gambler. But it’s not the thrill of winning: it’s the thrill of living on the edge of what he can get away with.
I think you need to know what Johnson is before you can place him somewhere into the UK constitution.
I once thought he was either a buffoon, or a highly intelligent person pretending to be a buffoon.
Now, I can’t decide if he is a wholly cynical operator concerned only with keeping himself in power, or an amoral creature devoid of any principles; someone who has no ‘guiding star’ by which to govern. And someone who needs a ruthless background fixer to do things for him, and tell him what he thinks.
I have never in my life seen any British Prime Minister so regularly and frequently called a ‘liar’ in the media.
Apart from power, his main (only?) driver seems to be ‘shagging’; perhaps they are the same to him.
Who is he?
He is all of those and more. An analyst’s dream.
Dominic Cummings seems to have been reading obscure textbooks of psychiatry, in particular about psychopathy.
He produced an Inuit word, Kulangeta, which they use to describe a person with all these (and more) attributes. It’s “a man who repeatedly lies and cheats and steals things…takes sexual advantage of many women…someone who does not pay attention to reprimands and is always being brought to the elders for punishment”.
More here: https://www.rte.ie/news/analysis-and-comment/2021/1211/1266187-boris-johnson/
It wouldn’t matter if they played their games and nobody got hurt, but the whole country is being hurt.
Sadly many still don’t even know they are being hurt by the very people they voted for, or by the very people they wave their flags for.
Johnson is, as you say, just doing what he can get away with for the benefit of Johnson. He is just a front man for a cabal of unscrupulous money men.
Until the majority of the population wake up to being duped, the circus will carry on.
” He is just a front man for a cabal of unscrupulous money men.” You hit the sorry nail right on its woeful head!
Lying to the Queen to prorogue Parliament should have blown up in his face immediately.
Why should the destitute tolerate the obscenely ceremonially wealthy if they’re not going to be protected when they really need it? A smile and wave at a charity is not nearly enough.
If you check out the PM’s full name you will find out that he was born in America and for the majority of his life chose to have an American passport.
Also on his father’s side at least he is of mixed race.
Under legislation passed by Governments of different persuasions in 2006 and 2014 an arguable case could be mounted to deprive him of his UK citizenship.
When Mrs Patel’s Nationality Bill is enacted the procedure to adopt against him will be a lot easier.
A great many sitting MPs including senior Cabinet Ministers, because of their mixed race origins, could also be deprived of their Uk citizenship whilst out of the country and denied reentry.
This post is of course not the least bit helpful but does highlight the mess the UK has quite legally made for itself without any Eu intervention whatsoever.
You are right that this post isn’t helpful, but it is nonetheless amusing that a high proportion of the cabinet are capable of being deprived of their UK citizenship under Patel’s law – she is one of them, along with the PM, Chancellor, Sec of State for health, etc. Pretty much only Govey left.
I’m not sure what this tells us about the constitution, but I think the last 8 weeks confirms a great deal about the interaction between politics and the mainstream media.
After the Tory party conference, the media message was how dominant the Conservative Government are, and how masterful its leader is etc. Now, after a few weeks of the UK media behaving like media in most other western countries behave (that is to say, applying some basic levels of scrutiny to those in power) the exact same Government led by the exact same leader are nearly 10 points behind the opposition in the opinion polls and very much on the ropes to the extent that the leader’s position is in some considerable doubt.
And it didn’t take long, did it? Just about 6 weeks since the Patterson debacle and the whiff of Tory corruption got too strong even for the Daily Mail to continue ignoring* what has been obvious to most politics’ watchers for years.
*I say ‘ignoring’ because, like everyone else, the DM knew exactly what type of person Johnson was when they enthusiastically endorsed him for PM 2 years ago and it will be interesting to see, now Greig has been replaced with a Dacre loyalist, how enthusiastic the DMG papers are to continue their scrutiny.
You can read the following in your best internal Rod Serling voice – “Imagine if you will a UK legacy print media that didn’t allow the Conservative Party to play politics on easy mode for 99% of the time and instead applied a fair level of scrutiny all the time in the manner a functioning fourth estate should in a genuine democracy, what sort of place would the UK be?”