[ADD – I have now done a short summary of the argument advanced in this post here.]
15 August 2022
On Twitter a number of accounts have recently commented in respect of front page of the Daily Mirror from 12 September 2019:
The online version of the article is here.
The comments are critical of the headline and of the apparent source of the headline, which is me.
I am quoted in the article, on the front page, as follows:
“Legal expert David Allen Green said: “In effect, the court held that Boris Johnson lied to the Queen.””
This seemingly renders me the source of the “Boris lied to the Queen myth”.
Another tweeter has said of the use of the word “lie” here shows that we cannot have civil discourse until adults control how they use language and that, in our system, the law of defamation is supposed to police such silliness.
I also cannot be regarded as a credible legal commentator, I have been told, because of this statement.
(I have deliberately not named the critics here, as I have a bigger platform than they do, and do not want to cause a pile-on.)
*
Do these critics have a point?
One preliminary point I can make straight away is that I do not think the newspaper headline accurately conveys the argument I was making in the text quoted.
The “in effect” was not mere surplusage – I used the phrase for a reason.
Had I wanted to stated plainly that I knew that the Prime Minister had lied to the Queen, I would have said so.
But I did not say that, because I did not mean that.
I said what had happened showed that, in effect, the Queen had been misled, and that this had been deliberate.
And so I cannot defend the Mirror headline, and I do not do so.
It is not the headline I would have chosen for the piece that quoted me.
*
And there is another preliminary point.
The view I expressed was not (and was not intended to be) a précis of any judgment – I know what the judgments say just as much as anyone who can read the relevant judgments.
No court was asked to determine if the Queen had been lied to, and so there is no judgment which sets out whether the Queen was lied to or not.
The view I expressed was based on my own reasoning, as a commentator, based on what I had read in a particular judgment and my understanding of the relevant circumstances.
Any judgment is a text and my role as a commentator is to place that text in a context.
This is what I do with many judgments in my commentary, and so this was the view I formed about this particular case.
*
But.
That is not good enough.
Can I still defend the view that I actually did express: that, in effect, the Queen was lied to?
Let us see.
*
We now need to go back in time and remind ourselves of the relevant dates.
It was 2019, and the United Kingdom was still a member of the European Union.
The original departure date of 29 March 2019 had been missed, and the exit date was then rearranged a couple of times, with the departure date eventually being set for 31 October 2019.
Johnson became Prime Minister in July 2019.
On 28 August 2019, the Queen made the following order:
“It is this day ordered by Her Majesty in Council that the Parliament be prorogued on a day no earlier than Monday the 9th day of September and no later than Thursday the 12th day of September 2019 to Monday the 14th day of October 2019, to be then holden for the despatch of divers urgent and important affairs, and that the Right Honourable the Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain do cause a Commission to be prepared and issued in the usual manner for proroguing the Parliament accordingly.”
The prorogation of parliament was therefore to be for five weeks, which was unusual in and of itself.
But what made this prorogation politically controversial was that it would deprive parliament from sitting in the key period running up to the then exit date of 31 October 2019, meaning that there was a real prospect of the United Kingdom leaving the European Union without a withdrawal agreement.
As it happened, parliament quickly passed the so-called Benn Act on 9 September 2019, which required the Prime Minister to request an extension in the event that there was no withdrawal agreement in place (which is what Johnson then had to do).
But the legal question at the time was whether the prorogation was lawful.
And the political question was whether Johnson had sought the prorogation for cynical reasons of expediency.
*
The prorogation faced legal challenges, including one in Scotland.
The appeal judgment of the Scottish case dated 11 September 2019 set out the following events:-
15 August 2019 – a memorandum went to the Prime Minister recommending prorogation, with the reason stated as “The current session is the longest since records began, and all bills announced as part of the last Queen’s Speech have now received Royal Assent, or are paused awaiting carry over into the next session: this makes it increasingly difficult to fill parliamentary time with anything other than general debates. As a new Prime Minister, there is an expectation that you will set out a refreshed domestic programme and it would be natural to do so when the House returns in the autumn.”
16 August 2019 – the Prime Minister wrote the following response:
“1. The whole September session is a rigmarole introduced [REDACTED] to show the public that MPs were earning their crust
2. So I don’t see anything especially shocking about this proposition
3. As Nikki notes, it is OVER THE CONFERENCE SEASON so that the sitting days lost are actually very few”.
23 August 2019 – there is a further memorandum to the Prime Minister, which the court described as a handling plan, saying:
“It refers to the PM’s agreement to approach HM theQueen with a request to prorogue Parliament within the period Monday, 9 to Thursday, 12 September and for a Queen’s Speech on Monday, 14 October. A telephone call between the PM and the Queen was fixed for the evening of 27 August. The Order in Council was to be signed on 28 August. On that day, the Chief Whip and the Leaders of the Houses ofCommons and Lords were to go to Balmoral to form the necessary meeting of the PrivyCouncil. After the signing, the members of the Cabinet would be informed, followed by theParliamentary Party and the press. The planned announcement to the Cabinet was to focus on the extraordinary length of the current parliamentary session. A statement would be made that this could not continue and that the PM would bring forward a new legislative agenda which would take matters “through our exit from the EU and the months that follow”. At the heart of the agenda would be the Government’s “number one legislative priority” (Brexit). If a deal was forthcoming, a Withdrawal Agreement Bill could be introduced to “move at pace to secure its passage before 31 October”. The PM would confirm that he was committed to facilitating Parliament’s ongoing scrutiny of Brexit. He would deliver a statement and take questions on the “first sitting back” (presumably14 October). A draft letter to Conservative MPs was provided. This re-iterated the message to Cabinet Members. It stated that the NIEFA 2019 would be debated on Monday, 9 September and that thereafter the Government would “begin preparation to end theParliamentary session ahead of a Queen’s Speech”.”
The court then noted that on 28 August 2019 three Privy Counsellors attended at Balmoral where the Queen promulgated the Order (which I quote above).
*
So we now have a sequence of events, which included the Prime Minister telephoning the Queen on 27 August 2019 and for privy councillors to attend for the Order to be made the following day.
*
The Scottish court decided as follows:
“When regard is had to all the material now before the court, it is my opinion that the petitioners are entitled to be sceptical of the proposition that the reason for making the Order was simply in order to prepare a new legislative agenda for announcement in a Queen’s Speech at the beginning of the next session of the Parliament. Further, I consider that they are entitled to ask the court to infer, as I would infer, as submitted on behalf of the petitioners, that the principal reason for the advice to the Queen to make the Order for the prorogation of Parliament was to prevent or impede Parliament holding the Executive politically to account in the run up to Exit Day; to prevent or impede Parliament from legislating on the United Kingdom’s exit from the European Union; and to allow the Executive to pursue a policy of no deal Brexit without further Parliamentary interference.”
The Scottish court did not believe the reasons which had been given in those quoted documents were the true reasons.
They were false reasons.
The court stated that there had been an improper purpose.
*
Now we come to something which was missing from the case – and from the concurrent case in England.
The dog that did not bark in the night.
As a former government lawyer, it fascinated me that the court was being invited to look at the original documents for the reasons for the prorogation, and not a comprehensive witness statement of a minster or senior official setting out the reasons.
This lack of a witness statement was referred to in the judgment:
“[Advocate] was also critical of the absence of any affidavit, whether to explain the documents or otherwise to support the reasons for advising the Queen to make the Order. It was for the Prime Minister, submitted Mr O’Neill, to commit to a position on oath and render himself liable to cross-examination. I do not agree with Mr O’Neill on any of these points. In my opinion it is open to a court to look at any documentary production which is tendered to it and give it such weight as the court considers that it is worth.”
This absence, in my opinion, was and is highly significant.
Why would no minister or official commit themselves to a signed witness statement, which would put the minister or official under the peril of perjury?
If the reasons as set out in the quoted documents were the true reasons, then there would be no reason why a minister or official would not sign a witness statement.
The only plausible explanation, it seemed – and still seems – to me is that no minister or official was willing to commit themselves to those being the true reasons for the prorogation, under pain of perjury.
If so, this would mean that they knew those were not the true reasons. So not only were those reasons false, they were known to be false.
*
This is when I wrote the article which was quoted by the Daily Mirror.
My reasoning was as follows:
1. There had been contact with the Queen by telephone, as well as a formal advice.
2. The Queen would have been give reasons for the prorogation, consistent with the documents quoted above.
3. Those reasons were not the true reasons for the prorogation.
4. Those giving the reasons knew that that they were not the true reasons for prorogation.
Point (1) is from the judgment; point (2) I inferred from the circumstances [ADD – and can be taken from John Major’s witness evidence, quoted below in the POSTSCRIPT]; point (3) was based on what the Scottish court found; and point (4) I inferred from the lack of a signed witness statement.
Based on this reasoning, I stated that – in effect – the Queen had been lied to. She had been given reasons which were false and which those giving the reasons knew to be false.
*
The Scottish case, like the concurrent English case, then went to the Supreme Court.
This was after my statement which was quoted by the Daily Mirror.
The Supreme Court approached the case differently from the Scottish appeal court – and in particular, the Supreme Court did not base its decision on improper motive.
It approached the case as follows (my emphasis added):
“For the purposes of the present case, therefore, the relevant limit upon the power to prorogue can be expressed in this way: that a decision to prorogue Parliament (or to advise the monarch to prorogue Parliament) will be unlawful if the prorogation has the effect of frustrating or preventing, without reasonable justification, the ability of Parliament to carry out its constitutional functions as a legislature and as the body responsible for the supervision of the executive. In such a situation, the court will intervene if the effect is sufficiently serious to justify such an exceptional course.”
The crucial element here is the requirement for a “reasonable justification”.
And again, that lack of a witness statement made all the difference (emphasis again added):
“It is impossible for us to conclude, on the evidence which has been put before us, that there was any reason – let alone a good reason – to advise Her Majesty to prorogue Parliament for five weeks, from 9th or 12th September until 14th October. We cannot speculate, in the absence of further evidence, upon what such reasons might have been. It follows that the decision was unlawful.”
That dog was still not barking.
*
Had the Supreme Court had a witness statement from a minister or official setting out the reasons for a five-week prorogation then, in my opinion, I think the government would have won the case.
(I have since spoken with a number of people involved in the case, and they agree.)
The potential importance of the lack of such a witness statement would have been known to the government’s litigation team, and that would have been conveyed to ministers and officials.
But still no signed witness statement was forthcoming.
*
So: I do not defend the Daily Mirror headline, and nor did I pretend to be summarising the reasoning of the court.
But, for the reasons set out above, I think I can maintain that, in effect, the Queen was lied to.
And if this was not the case, then there needs to be a better explanation than the ones that I have reached for (a) the reasons that were given to the Queen when the Prime Minister telephoned her, and (b) the reason why there was no signed witness statement setting out the reasons for the prorogation.
If someone can come up with a better explanation than the above for (a) and (b) then I will change my view and recant.
But given the reasoning above, I am afraid I cannot escape the view that, in effect, the Queen was lied to.
**
POSTSCRIPT
I have been reminded that the former Prime Minister John Major, in his witness statement for the legal challenge in England, expressly stated that a Prime Minister would give reasons to the Queen:
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David Allen, thank you for the interesting article.
Can it be argued that the “subclause” “in effect, doe not take away much or add much to the substantive purport of the actions discussed, from a legal perspective.
Put more simply, is it not the case that, at the end of the day, stating that someone has, in effect, lied (or been lied to), is not much different from stating that someone has lied (or been lied to)?
The contents of your post, to me, seem to add weight to this line of reasoning above.
Boris and & lied to the Queen. Effectively so, but, in the end, ineffectively.
I think the summary version is: haters gonna hate.
Doesn’t make much sense for you to get stick for a Mirror headline you didn’t write.
Following the judgment the prorogation order was annulled, the legal effect of this is that the prorogation didn’t happen.
What would have happened if any parliamentarians had rejected the prorogation and continued to parley?
Being the only members sitting, it would seem that they could have done anything they wanted, presuming that none of the Johnsonites would have joined them.
The Queen has been widely criticised for agreeing to the prorogation, but I think the result was entirely predictable, if not almost inevitable, and rather than acquiescing to Johnson’s nonsense, she actually handed the keys of the nation to those who opposed him.
Shame that nobody twigged to that.
“Being the only members sitting, it would seem that they could have done anything they wanted”
Not without the agreement of the Speaker, surely.
asking purely for information: does the Speaker have any role (formally or informally) in the process of seeking a prorogation? And, should the Speaker have such a role – given that the Speaker has, in practice, a critical role in moderating the process whereby parliament holds the executive to account?
(‘moderate’ here in the Church of Scotland sense, where a Moderator is to some degree a Convener / Chair but is also guiding the actions of what is formally a court).
Even more remarkable, the country is beholden to a private individual, the brave Gina Miller, to take this to the Supreme Court with the effect that the attempted illegal prorogation was defeated. However, the perpetrators of this outrage upon our democracy remain free and unencumbered by any sense of shame as parliamentarians or as elected representatives of the people. It was a very early indication that Johnson’s administration had no respect for Parliament or the law.
I often think of her bravery, and what she faced as a result. Were it not for Miller, might the Johnson Brigands have wrought even greater harm to this country? – Because that early decision showed that they had no respect for protocol or, more fundamentally, democracy.
Boris the Libertarian* has given individual freedom a very bad name.
*[libertarian, for Johnson, means freedom to do whatever he wants, and Devil take the hindmost]
Is there not a danger of airbrushing from the narrative Ms Cherry and the others (whose petition to the Court of Session was lodged 30 July 2019)?
I apologise in advance for the fact that this observation takes us somewhat off the beaten track, but I read the following – which apprently was written in an email to the Prime Minster – with growing outrage:-
“…and all bills announced as part of the last Queen’s Speech have now received Royal Assent, or are paused awaiting carry over into the next session: this makes it increasingly difficult to fill parliamentary time with anything other than general debates.”
This rather helpful Wikipedia page lists all the Departmental and Topical Committees operated within Parliament:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliamentary_committees_of_the_United_Kingdom
That’s 51 Committees, by my count, which operate from the House of Commons (there being yet more in the Lords). Yet the author of this missive is clearly of the view that these entities do not need to go before the House with general updates, or to present their Committees to the House for general questioning.
When considering the (dys)functioning of our own system of government, it is sometimes convenient to gaze “across the pond” and try to make out how the colonies are getting on with similar tasks. In one sense, that answer is “not much better”, given 1) that the entire system of governance appears largely theatrical rather than substantial; 2) the process has become excessively politicised in the last 5-6 years, thanks to recent leadership practices; 3) that despite the ostensibly more extensive scrutiny, there appears to be little visible benefit for the average citizen.
On the other hand, it should not be for the administration of the day to unilaterally decide that it has no need of parliamentary oversight. If one can argue that it is acceptable to prorogue parliament when it is about to consider something as significant as the Brexit agreement, why not do the same when placing an order for new aircraft carriers, or setting he budget, or declaring a war, or declaring a republic. Heck, why stop there, why not abolish parliament completely and declare a dictatorship.
Oh, wait.
Dear Sproggy, in your view, are we getting closer to or further from the day when we might find as much, or more inspiration from looking across the channel to our peers, rather than across the pond ?
I don’t think we’ll ever get that picky, if I’m honest.
It probably isn’t obvious to those of us not given pause to consider more thoughtfully, but the amount of influence (“copying”) of laws and legislative practices between nations is quite surprising, particularly when a party seeks reelection for a second or third – or even fourth – term in office.
By this point the original platform that won them their first administration is barely visible in the rear view mirror and new ideas become thin on the ground. At that point, the leadership of any governing party will inevitably start to look overseas for inspiration.
My gut tells me that in the case of the UK, we’re much more likely to cast a surrepticious glance in the direction of our “Five Eyes” (the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand) partners… not because their societies or legal frameworks most closely resemble our own, but because they all use English as their first language, which makes the comprehension of their legislation so much easier to obtain and absorb.
The United Kingdom copied the idea of school SATs (Standard Assessment Tests). Donald Trump’s Education Secretary, Betsy Du Ross, introduced school vouchers, borrowing from a British idea.
When it comes to the UK, I think you’ll find our elected officials are so keen to plagiarise, they honestly don’t care where the ideas come from.
Or you could go back to Reagan/Thatcher – she carefully prepared (by stockpiling coal) and then took on the Miners’ Union to pave the way for curbing union practices; he turned government ire towards the Air Traffic Controllers, whose strike crippled domestic US travel. In both cases the administration acted provocatively; in both cases the response from the unions gave the government the mandate they needed to introduce union-busting legislation that would have been unthinkable without the industrial action that preceded it.
It was inevitable that the Queen would agree to a prorogation – if she’d done otherwise, there would have been uproar.
It was equally inevitable that no minister would want to perjure themselves, not even for the Great Cause of Brexit.
It was inevitable that Johnson and his crew would “try it on” in this way, and the prorogation stunt was just the first of many attempts (some more successful) to ride roughshod over convention.
Thank god he’s going, but he has set a trend that may well continue with whoever his successor may be. Let’s hope it does actually end with him.
The part that caught my eye was Johnson’s redacted reference to the “rigmarole” of MPs being seen to do their job – the summer recess ending a few weeks earlier, in early September, and Parliament sitting for a few weeks before the conference recess in October. Rather than MPs taking three months off from August to October. I guess Johnson likes his “long vacation”. What nice pay and conditions they have negotiated for themselves.
From the dates of recesses, this seems to have changed in 2010. https://www.parliament.uk/about/faqs/house-of-commons-faqs/business-faq-page/recess-dates/list-of-previous-commons-recess-dates/
And the person responsible for this “rigmarole” would appear to be David Cameron. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10174645
As you imply, failure to give reasons is a factor that can lead to decisions being struck down in judicial review. The absence of evidence from the government on the reasons for the lengthy prorogation was and remains striking.
I think it later leaked that the redacted phrase was ‘by girly swot Cameron’
It won’t be long, I suspect, before we hear that Johnson didn’t ‘knowingly’ lie to the Queen nor the three stooges who, unknowingly travelled to Scotland with the paperwork.
To make a more serious point: Johnson and his gang have driven a coach and horses through the UK’s virtual constitution, this being just one very notable instance.
There seems to be no effort or planning going into closing off these opportunities to bypass parliament; if anything both new prospective PMs appear to be seeking ways to drive a convoy of juggernauts through it at the earliest opportunity by, for example, “tearing up EU regulations” without any parliamentary scrutiny being applied.
That coach and horses sure gets around.
It wasn’t *that* long ago that the country was left angry and bewildered as we learned how our elected MPs were defrauding all of us with the expenses scandal. If you need a refresher on just how deep the rot ran, the Wikipedia page is a good overview.
Now stop and think about how many changes have been ushered in to prevent a repeat?
Or we could think about our nation’s response to Covid-19 and our pandemic preparedness… and then gaze in shock at the largely apathetic response to the outbreaks of monkeypox.
Or how about the 2008/2009 financial services meltdown – how come just today the BBC News web site has posted an article:-
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-62504445
about the Financial Conduct Authority failing to act on a “doomed property investment scheme”.
The point you highlight is crucial yet so often overlooked – as a nation we keep experiencing significant set-backs from which our government, our system of government, simply fails to learn. Yes, you could point to the above-referenced FCA headline and think, “but that didn’t impact me…” except it might, if the government decides to step in and bail out those who lost everything, because such funds will come from us.
Life is risk and mistakes happen; but that doesn’t mean we should tolerate a system of government [not necessarily any one specific administration, but the entire structure and fabric in the UK] that remains institutionally incapable of learning from mistakes.
Our politicians love to use terms like, “Great Britian, plc” – but the truth is that if the nation were a plc and our cabinet were a board of directors, there would have been a shareholder revolt by now and the whole lot of them would have been sacked.
Misquoting, those who fail to learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat it.
“Had the Supreme Court had a witness statement from a minister or official setting out the reasons for a five-week prorogation then, in my opinion, I think the government would have won the case.”
I was slightly surprised by this.
Is it that DAG thinks that any statement at all would have done – just its very existence doing the work – summarizing the arguments in the documents actually submitted? Or would it have had to have better — more reasonable – arguments for the prorogation? What could they have been? And if so, surely they would have been inconsistent with the original paperwork “(and contents of royal phone call).
But what happens to the perjury argument? It seems Johnson and his colleagues knew they risked perjuring themselves, and so avoided doing so. How would the production of a statement, and subsequent questioning under oath, have side-stepped this problem?
(My apologies if I have completely misunderstood.)
I find myself torn over this issue, due to being one of those annoying republican types, albeit one who is in no particular hurry to actually abolish the monarchy.
For me, the truly outrageous thing is not that Johnson lied to Her Majesty but that he was required to give her a reason in the first place. And if he had not been required to give the Queen a reason, Johnson might have been more relaxed about telling the public the true reason, which we may assume boils down to “I can do what I like so up yours.” And (making some wild assumptions about what the law would be in my ideal world where the Queen has no magic powers), the UKSC case would have come down to whether the decision to prorogue was unreasonable in the Wednesbury sense. Which might well have ended differently.
I doubt it would have changed much if prorogation had gone ahead. The Benn Act meant that No Deal Brexit would still have to be a deliberate act. Corbyn would still have been unelectable. The opposition parties would still have missed their opportunity to call Johnson’s bluff on an election before the end of October 2019.
If the reason for the Prime Minister approaching the Monarch to seek approval for prorogation of parliament was because it was to the whim or whimsey of the Queen to agree or decline, then I would have to agree with you (because, implicit in that – along with Royal Ascent) would be the idea that everything parliament does is subject to that approval).
But if you think of it in terms of a “public check and balance” – the idea that merely the fact that the Prime Minister had to go to Queen and submit this as a request (as opposed to simply declaring, “I have decided”, or worse still, saying nothing and just doing as he pleased – then the presence of the Monarch in this process is actually rather reassuring.
But for the public scrutiny and protocol regarding such a request, the entire thing might have open the door to enabling the sitting government to do pretty much as they pleased.
So I think the point you raise is valid and important, but also that we need to consider it from different perspectives to understand it fully.
Of course the palace must have known the true reason. Everyone did at the time. It was perfectly plain what was going on. Palace officials were meeting with and speaking to Rees-Mogg about the matter for at least a week before the order in council was made. It may well be that Johnson and Rees-Mogg lied to the palace, but if they did so it must have been a “nudge nudge, wink wink, know what I mean?” kind of lie.
I remember the original incident and my abiding memory centres around the lack of a witness statement .
What with everything going on in the world and the UK’s new non European status resurrecting this argument really beggars belief.
Six years after Brexit people are experiencing reduced living standards and services and being softened up to expect power cuts this winter.
I can find no words in the Privy Council Oath which spell out the jurand’s* obligation to speak the truth to Her Majesty. Everything that comes close veers away into woolly generalisation at the last moment.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privy_Council_of_the_United_Kingdom#Privy_Council_oath_and_initiation_rite
*(If it didn’t exist as a word before, it does now.)
“Jurand”? What’s wrong with “Oath taker”?
It is interesting that in English words of Germanic origin are stronger and clearer than those derived from Latin or French.
(“We will show you the way to go home”/”we will indicate the route to your abode”)
“À chacun son goût” / “De gustibus non disputandum.”
“To each their own.” Strong and short. (I would add “clear and direct” but they are French and Latin).
“Taste is nonjusticiable.”
“It was inevitable that the Queen would agree to a prorogation – if she’d done otherwise, there would have been uproar.” (Liz above).
Apparently then the Queen is little more than a glove puppet who must do as she is bid.
Is this sensible if it is really the case?
In Ireland the President’s signature is required for laws to be enacted. The President has a duty to refer potential violations of the constitution to the Supreme Court, and this has happened, albeit rarely. It seems a perfectly reasonable and appropriate safeguard, and quite an improvement on expectations of glove puppetry.
There is one other possibility for the lack of a witness statement, which one other commenter has aided to as a “nudge nudge wink wink” situation.
And that is that the prorogation was entered into in connivance with the palace.
If that was the case, then HMG declining to present a witness statement could be a very understandable reluctance to put anything in court that might implicate the palace.
Whether the palace and the Queen are one and the same in this case I have no idea.
I do find it fascinating that certain Johnson-supporting pundits are telling themselves that it’s a “myth” that Johnson lied to the Queen. It is of course a myth that the Supreme Court said he had lied to her (as you point out, it didn’t even ask itself the question), and as far as I’m aware there’s no evidence that he directly lied to her, as opposed to causing lies to be transmitted to her by others. But some people seem to have taken a wild leap from that to believing that Johnson’s stated reasons for the prorogation were true, which is very hard to maintain given the evidence.
A few of those people genuinely aren’t very bright and may have been fooled into thinking this, but I don’t think that will apply to most. Which leaves the possibility that they have become so tangled up in the web of untruths Johnson weaves that they genuinely end up believing ridiculous things just because he says them, or the possibility that they know the Queen was misled, are embarrassed about it, and choose to lie.
As I’ve said before, if we had a sensible constitution prorogation would need a vote in the Commons, not a request to the lady with magic powers. but that’s a discussion for another day.
A vote in the Commons to suspend Parliament? That’s a laugh. Who would go along with that other than the governing party?
I don’t know if you are right or wrong – though your line of argument is convincing.
What strikes me is that Johnson did not prorogue parliament sooner after becoming PM. If he had said in July, we are proroguing for August to give this session a well needed break and for my team to develop its legislative agenda, I doubt anyone would have cared or noticed. That seems to suggest his using that excuse in August for September was contrived.
Secondly, I wonder what would have happened if he had given a statement under oath supporting the points given to the Queen? I suspect the court would have had to take them in good faith and accept that it was exceptional. The case against his government would have been lost.
Third, I then wonder what would have happened with Brexit. I suspect we would NOT have crashed out. I suspect the UK would have blinked at the last minute (as it did under May) – and that Johnson would have more quickly become the victim of the hardliners who expect the world to work as they wish rather than as it does.
Whatever – we are better off without him (except for what follows looks like being worse).