12th April 2022
Constitutional law is not supposed to be interesting.
Constitutional law is supposed to be boring.
And Boris Johnson could not make it any more exciting.
To take three examples.
First, the Supreme Court held that he gave unlawful advice to the Queen over prorogation of parliament.
(An incident that managed to engage all four of the monarch, parliament, the courts and the executive – the constitutional law equivalent of a full house.)
Second, his government actually introduced legislation to Parliament to enable it to break the law.
"Yes, this [new legislation] does break international law in a very specific and limited way," says Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis
On Wednesday, the government will publish new legislation on customs rules in Northern Irelandhttps://t.co/bvsv5puvij pic.twitter.com/O2j5w3fcdI
— BBC Politics (@BBCPolitics) September 8, 2020
(Just typing that seems strange – but it happened, although the government averred that the law would be broken in a “limited and specific” way.)
And now, an even more extraordinary thing has happened.
The prime minister has been found by the metropolitan police to have broken this governments own laws on gatherings under lockdown.
UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Chancellor Rishi Sunak will be fined over Downing Street lockdown parties https://t.co/gTBBsa0bQw
— BBC Breaking News (@BBCBreaking) April 12, 2022
And the necessary implication of this sanction is that the prime minister knowingly misled parliament when denying such a gathering took place.
He cannot even say he was misinformed, as he was at the gathering himself.
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Johnson has not been prime minister a long time, and there are many prime ministers who have been in office far longer with far less constitutional excitement.
Of course he should resign – but that is not the point of this blogpost.
The point instead is to convey the sheer magnitude of what Johnson has ‘accomplished’ in his trashing of constitutional norms – and in under three years..
Just one of the above examples – and there have been many more, it is just those three came readily to mind – would be career-ending for a politician in any normal political system.
And that even now nobody knows if he will resign is an indication of how abnormal politics are at the moment.
It takes a certain quality for a prime minister in three years to contrive this triple-whammy of unlawfulness.
Indeed, it is difficult to conceive what he could still yet do as a fourth instalment.
Brace, brace.
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Thank you.
Indeed, all of that.
And nobody will resign.
And nobody will be fired.
That’s depressing!
Johnson is apparently aiming for the same level of impunity that Putin has. So Parliament should send a signal to the world that there is a difference between us and Russia in regard we hold our leaders to account.
“would be career-ending for a politician in any normal political system.”
I think this should read:
“would be career-ending for a politician with any integrity.”
I wholeheartedly agree Peter.
So much of the act currently unfolding before us, the mere observers in the audience, by Johnson & co is just part part of the main play itself. It is a part of a framework constructed to serve their own ends, each act in turn influenced by the desires of their unseen backers, and the agendas these unknown scriptwriters bring to the table. It is they and their vested interests, not Johnson & co, who have so carefully scripted this play within a play.
And it is those same unknown scriptwriters who will determine this play’s last act and Johnson’s last line.
Sadly for the UK, the current first past the post (so-called) democratic process is anything but. This inherent and fundamental flaw, so effectively baked into our current voting system, rendered the current political farce always inevitable; there for the taking by, & benefitting of, any narcissistic, psychopathic and/or sociopathic individual who saw fit, and who had the guile and the opportunity to do so.
This fundamental design flaw in our democratic process is now being exploited to the maximum by ‘The Emperor in his New Clothes’, for whom honesty & integrity are low down on his agenda.
As so brilliantly described and indeed prophesied by the great George Orwell himself:
‘Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.’
I rest my case.
“And that even now nobody knows if he will resign is an indication of how abnormal politics are at the moment.”
Abnormal, or a ‘new normal’?
Certainly abnormal by historical context, yes. But Trump, Johnson and others (looking at e.g. Brazil, Russia) seem to feel unbound by any need to abide by historical norms. One can only hope this is a passing phase.
Regular readers of this blog will probably be tired of me saying that he needs to be prosecuted for misconduct in public office, but if wilfully lying to the extent that he does is not an abuse of the public’s trust, then I don’t know what is.
I know that it’s very boring to keep saying it, but all you need do to make me stop is to explain to me how I am wrong…
One of the big problems is how to initiate the evidence gathering and prosecution …
It was hard enough to shame the Met Police into investigating Partygate, wasn’t it? Even though the press had ALREADY uncovered much of the evidence the Met needed weeks beforehand.
The MET were complicit in the partygate scandal/crime. Instead of doing their job and issuing the fines at those parties, they provided the security for them. I’d say that’s aiding and abetting.
Perhaps the answer is to prosecute the Met for misconduct in public office?
And yet it requires 54 Tory MPs to express no confidence and then for about 180 to decline to support him in a leadership contest.
And still he would deny the result following the Trump playbook.
Well, it has been a while since a serving prime minister fought a duel (Duke of Wellington and the Earl of Winchilsea, in 1829).
The question has been asked more than once: can Johnson survive this? And answer to date appears to be “yes”, because the bounder has no honour or integrity, and his party are spineless. He is not going to fall voluntarily on his own sword, so someone else needs to force the issue.
The “good guy” theory of government has been replaced by the “bad guy”
Saying you only broke a law in a “specific and limited way” sounds a lot like trying to argue that you only broke a little bit of your mother’s prized bone china tea pot when you accidentally dropped it on the kitchen floor.
When you deliberately dropped it on the floor, perhaps?
I deny everything,
No need to deny anything. Just ask the nearest policeman to decide for you. And, if deemed guilty, apologise that any dropping of a tea pot should have occured, without your knowledge of course.
The notion being peddled by Conservative MPs that we should keep a lying, law breaking charlatan as PM because there’s a war on is laughable. At this of all times we need a leader who deserves and commands respect.
As a tax payer and citizen of the United Kingdom; therefore as someone who pays a portion of the Prime Minister’s salary (even though it may be an exceedingly small portion of that salary), perhaps the greatest frustrations to surface from this event are that the British Prime Minister lied, repeatedly, about his conduct in office. Now, quite obviously, he isn’t the first. But it would be rather nice if he were the last. Unfortunately, nothing in the minsterial code of conduct, anything pertaining to being a sitting MP, or even a public servant, it seems, requires honesty from our elected politicians.
Let that sink in for a moment.
It is far too easy to think that this all related to parties and, therefore, this is trivial and not worth making a fuss about.
But what about the scenario when the sitting Prime Minister, Tony Blair, lied outrageously to Parliament and the British people in claiming that Iraq had “weapons of mass destruction” with the potential to strike British interests? Based on that lie – and taken from Wikipedia, 179 military personnel lost their lives.
Consequences? Well, so far, Boris Johnson appears to have suffered more punishment – for attending an illegal social gathering – than Tony Blair did for pushing the UK in to an illegal war.
Point being that unless or until there are direct and painful consequences for elected officials who lie about their official duties, elected officials will continue to lie.
Sometimes, those lies are more offensive than consequential, as might be the case with my two examples. Personally, I can’t think of a less appealing crowd to socialise with than Downing Street staff and ministers. But sometimes those lies have consequences. Sometimes, as a consequence of those lies, people die.
This is why, irrespective of what the elected politicians think, the UK needs a robust, professional and rigorously enforced set of rules.
There are so many things we could do:-
1. Re-purpose emptying ministry buildings around London to become “hotels” for MPs, eliminating the need for all second homes and second home expenses. Ensure that usage is strictly monitored and reported on, that “guests” are limited to spouse and children under 18 and no others.
2. Enact a rule or law that prohibits anyone present from stating a falsehood in either House, with language set to catch anyone “knowingly stating a falsehood, or stating a falsehood that they should have known to be false based on their personal responsibilities”.
3. Enact a rule or law that prohibits any minister from stating a (work-related) falsehood anywhere, at any time. Make it crystal clear that serving as an MP and Minister is an honour and that it will be taken away.
Ensure that among the penalties for breaches of these rules will be an immediate termination from post and a mandatory by-election to which the rule breaker will be prohibited from standing, by virtue of a rule that prevents anyone dismissed from post for these offenses from standing again.
This isn’t supposed to be some rolling, years-long party for Johnson and Co. in Westminster, yet he continues to act as though it is.
We pay him to be professional and get the job done.
It isn’t just that the Downing Street in-crowd partied while the country was in lockdown, it was that they could afford to do it while most of the country is experiencing massive hardship, thanks to inflation, energy prices, job losses and an on-going bungling of the administration.
Calling for resignation is to miss the point. That shouldn’t be necessary. The rules should have booted them out for us.
2.
This does seem to be a bit of a hostage to fortune whenever the next general election happens.
Although Johnson may try to time it for after the ‘triumph’ of the was in Ukraine, the opposition parties will all be able to say “he made the law, he broke the law and he laughed at you”.
That may not be too much of a worry in Tory heartlands (although I’m not totally convinced of that), but it should certainly worry MPs in the red wall seats.
I’ve heard speculation about Sunak resigning – he may as well as he’s not going anywhere at the moment and may want to hand the cost of living crisis on to somebody else – now that might really up the ante.
And, then again, perhaps not.
I think Sunak’s calculus is going to be brutally selfish. His question will be: “Will there be a GE called; and, if so, will the Tories win or lose?”
Only if his decision tree ends at “lose” will Sunak resign.
Until then, his motive is not just the personal aggrandisement of the role, but of course his ability to influence government policy to help family and friends. You don’t get to be Chancellor without coveting the flat next door… but at the same time, he’s going to be playing a long game.
His wife is either a billionaire or worth a high number of millions of people – he doesn’t need to work. He will step down if it looks like his post-politics influence will be harmed, but little else is going to move him.
Trashing of constitutional norms, is a perfect phrase to describe the Boris Johnson’s behaviour.
However it does beg the question whether the constitutional norms needs to be strengthen to deal with the fact that we have politicians with less integrity.
Do we need to publicise and use the Parliamentary Ombudsman?
Does the ministerial code need to be placed on a Statutory basis and made enforceable by Parliament or the the courts?
Do we need to revive the practice of impeachment?
Saying all of that, any constitutional arrangement is only as the people that operate within in it and if we have politicians without integrity, who are unwilling to resign or be sacked when breaking the rules, we are all poorer for it.
It is a sad day for democracy and the British parliamentary system.
Do we need to publicise and use the Parliamentary Ombudsman?
Kodzo. You and David’s other followers might like to familiarise yourself with the following websites:
PHSOthetruestory
PHSO Trust Pilot
Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee (PACAC)
PACAC is chaired by William Wragg MP and holds an annual scrutiny session regarding the Ombudsman. Over 100 pieces of negative evidence has been submitted to the Committee about the Ombudsman in the last three years. The other websites are also very informative. The Ombudsman is a toothless tiger scrutinised each year by a parliamentary committee who show loose fitting sets of dentures as opposed to any teeth of their own.
The Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman, to give his correct title has demonstrated time and again that the organisation is not fit for purpose. The latest example being that he is still unable to investigate health complaints which do not fall within Tier 1 or 2 of his scale of injustice. I repeat the words of Quentin Hogg MP who said of the Ombudsman legislation when it was set up in the 1960’s “It’s a swiz”.
Johnson apologises for breaking the law but says he has a job to do and a mandate to do it so won’t resign. Utterly contemptible. Sunak hasn’t yet said anything, I wonder why? He could score some brownie points with the next Tory leader and salvage his political career if he was to resign from the Government immediately on principle. Even the unprincipled Johnson would be hard pushed to ignore that example and resign himself.
So I guess Starmer will be asking at PMQs, “Since when did it become acceptable for Conservative ministers to mislead Parliament ?”
That is such an excellent question – and watching him trying to wriggle out of that one without getting into a deeper mess would be interesting (although our current system allows him simply to ignore it).
Well done, sir!
I think the sensible money for PMQs would be on Starmer getting swept aside with even money on someone behaving like an idiot and getting thrown out by the Speaker.
People would be much better off accepting that President Boris Liar is their President for the foreseeable future and enjoying the Easter break.
As all Brits will know from studying their own unwritten Constitution or old Kinks’ album:
« Honi soit qui mal y pense. « .
He did not actually apologise at all, he said he did not know because no one told him and that this means he accepts the police determination he broke the law but he personally does not think he did so!
My Twitter feed then blew up
with a torrent of messages from Tory MP’s – curiously all worded in almost the same way.
They all said ‘he has apologised let’s forget about the issue and move on’, then followed by a variety of jingoistic statements such as ‘he is responsible for Britains world beating response to Covid’ and ‘he is leading the whole of the West in its response to Ukraine’.
I and many others had a fun happy hour responding to these absurdities.
However what we saw yesterday was a major slide on the slippery slope to no rule of law.
I confess I really don’t care about Johnson & Rishi lying and boozing on my dime. I really should care – but I have become so desensitised to the rottenness of our government I don’t care. Well I do care underneath, I will give them a kicking when I get a chance.
There seem so many more serious problems the country faces about which nothing whatsoever is done. The place seems to be going to hell in a handcart. Nothing really works, we are going nowhere, there is no hope. But what joy, in a few weeks some of us get to vote – I will gain a very very small pleasure in casting my votes for people who really don’t matter, who will have absolutely no useful effect.
The arguments by his MPs for retaining Boris Johnson as leader of his party raise the following issues:
1. The war in Ukraine. Boris must stay because a change of leader would not be a good thing whilst the war is ongoing. France is holding elections right now. Is the Tory logic in 2024 going to be ‘we had better not have a general election as Ukraine is still resisting Russia?’ We can hope the conflict won’t last that long but that is uncertain.
2. Covid is still a threat. If England were to be forced into another lockdown in order to save lives, would the PM have the courage and integrity to take that course of action, knowing the population would be unlikely to take any notice of the regulations as a result of his own behaviour.
His credibility as a leader has gone. His party will pay a heavy price for failing to remove him.
I don’t recognise this country anymore.
Come along, chaps. Don’t listen to those moaning minnies who mock his droopy moustache, his badly-furled umbrella and his obsolete wing collar……..
Sorry, wrong indispesable Hero of the Hour and guarantor of peace in our time. I’ll try again.
Let’s not be distracted by trivialities when it has never been more true that “cometh the hour, cometh the man”. This one cometh all over the place. You never know where he’ll pop up next.
Regarding rules, you can make them as watertight as you like, but if there can be the slightest risk of their not being enforced rigorously and promptly at the level we’re talking about, the game’s a bogey.* Pockets of civilised behaviour may persist here and there, but if they are unaware of each other and don’t coalesce in a critical mass to create the cultural norms that underlie a healthy society , civilisation is on the skids.
*Look it up.
I have just emailed Grant Shapps, cc my MP, Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak:
“Dear Grant Shapps
Thank you for your labyrinthine wriggling on the Today programme this morning. I am glad I live in a country now devoid of rules of conduct. I do of course recognise that I will never be able to hold anyone accountable for anything anymore but, whoopee, I myself may now break any law I choose. If charged, I shall simply refer the charging officer to the Grant Shapps dictionary of dirty excuses.
Presumably you will no longer pursue poor Mr Hebblethwaite as I’m sure he had no “malice,” and has led an otherwise exemplary life.”
To which my MP replied:
“Thank you for writing to me about the fixed penalty notice issued to the Prime Minister on 12 April.
I very much appreciate your anger. The Prime Minister has rightly apologised for the events that took place at 10 Downing Street. He should never have been put in this position, and that is why reform was needed in the way Downing Street is run.
It is not my view that the Prime Minister should resign. It is now time to get on with the job of levelling up, boosting the economy and the NHS after the pandemic, and leading global efforts to support Ukraine. He has my full support.”
to which I replied, “I can only say God help your soul”.
If you can bear to, please copy your outgoing / incoming emails to the Guardian’s Politics Editor. The Guardian presumably intends to do “follow up” analyses and articles on the huge gaps between the action constituents want and what Tory MPs are prepared to promise them.
At least you’ve had a reply. I’m still waiting for mine …
Have done, thanks for the heads up. I always do hear from my MP and it’s 99% drivel; I only go on writing to relieve my feelings!
I think that an increasing number of Conservative MPs, including mine in Derbyshire Dales, just send standard letters, probably provided by Central Office, to constituents.
I never get specific answers to specific questions that I raise.
I think you’re right but it doesn’t excuse their total failure to think at all for themselves. It would have been better for my MP not to reply at all than to send such a tricksy email.
What powers do the people have to overturn this government, other than waiting on a general election (or a revolution). What are the steps we can take to get rid of these corrupted men and women?
I think we’ve no powers at all.
I’m not sure about the details now but there was a scheme backed by Corbyn as Labour leader that would allow Labour constituencies to recall their MP if enough voters asked.
If that scheme had gone through, it’s probable other political parties would have been shamed into adopting it too.
So it might have been possible for Uxbridge voters to force Johnson out, even if other Tory MPs didn’t want that to happen.
A good example of a previously undiscovered deep conceptual flaw. Till now, both the UK and in the US have sometimes more, sometimes less, adhered to “the rule of law”. The problem is that this largely Enlightenment-based political structure was designed with rational actors in mind, even demagogues, but not with what we have now: anti-social actors installed by oligarchies. Our rationality-based system is largely defenseless against irrational attacks from within. It’s become a bit like the Roman Empire: damage to the system becomes a function of just how far anti-social acts can go before the entire structure collapses.
I had hoped that our betters would come to see the inutility of blowing up their own society, but it appears that many of these folks also harbour similar anti-social preferences. It doesn’t follow that we are inevitably doomed, but I think it safe to say that at the moment most regular folks don’t realize how much work it will take to right the wagon and put it on a path again.
Is it possible to have a “quadruple whammy” of unlawfulness? Re the Rwanda scheme – can Dave Allen Green confirm whether that’s ALREADY been ruled out as unlawful long before it was proposed?
As I remember it, there’s a Supreme Court decision saying asylum seekers MUST NOT BE DEPORTED to another country while their claims for asylum in the UK haven’t yet been through the whole process (appeals and all).
The judges reached that decision because there’s strong statistical and other evidence showing that asylum seekers would be much less likely to obtain proper justice if they were out of this country and unable to talk through their cases directly with their lawyers, obtain relevant documents, etc. The judges pointed out claimants had struggled with unacceptably poor, difficult to access and expensive IT connections between the places where they were dumped (often without money) and the UK.
Priti Patel and her officials must be aware of this case because it’s a relatively recent one (decided while Theresa May was PM?).