Shipman says critics of the plan saw it as "the greatest act of constitutional vandalism since Charles I sent soldiers to arrest five members of the Long Parliament" in 1642.
So desperate were these 'patriots' to stop those MPs opposed to Brexit from blocking a disastrous no-deal exit from the EU, they were perfectly OK with sidelining democracy to do it.
The events involving Geoffrey Cox, the then Attorney General, and Dominic Cummings are absolutely incredible. Cox had told Johnson on three occasions and wrongly that prorogation was legal but he should be aware the UK Supreme Court could rule that it wasn’t (which they eventually did).
Johnson asked him not to tell cabinet about the possibility that a judicial review might declare the prorogation unlawful, and just say it was legal. Cox did precisely that. Nobody around the cabinet table when the decision was made knew the risks they were running. This is really shocking to me. In a 'phone call to Cox, Johnson is quoted as saying:
“Listen, I’ve spoken to the Queen and prorogation is going on. Please don’t spook the cabinet by talking about the litigation risk.”
Cox was said to be "uncomfortable" with the plan he agreed to do it.
Civil servants were up in arms about it all. Helen MacNamara, who was the deputy secretary to the cabinet at the time, was the heroine. She came into No 10 when she had been at home looking after her child who was ill, to confront Cummings and Johnson who were adamant they would not send a letter to Brussels asking for an extension to the two-year Article 50 period as required by law.
Listen to this:
"Cummings said he wanted to hear what would happen if Johnson didn’t send the letter and broke the law. The prime minister interjected: 'What if I just wrote ‘Up yours!’ on it?'"
"Eadie [from the government's legal dept] and MacNamara exchanged a look. MacNamara explained that the Benn act dictated the exact wording of the letter which must be sent. Cummings was adamant, 'well we just won’t send it.'”
MacNamara warned Cummings and Johnson that if the government set out to break the law, officials would simply mutiny. She told them, "The civil service can’t work for you. If you want to do that, it’s the law, none of us can work for you.”
There ensued a conversation about what would happen in that event and if the police might come to arrest the PM!!! MacNamara told them that had misunderstood things (not for the first time, eh?) and that far from protecting Johnson from a policeman with a warrant for his arrest, those guarding the building would be the ones arresting him!
“The police don’t work for you in that situation, Dom, they work for me,” she said. “They work for us. It’s not your building. These aren’t your people. The police work for the Queen. We all work for the Queen.” Johnson has confirmed she did say these things.
To anti-monarchy people (I am not one) I would ask them to consider this seriously as one of the key checks and balances in our largely unwritten constitution.
Eddie, now Lord Lister, Johnson’s chief strategic adviser, asked: “Can the Queen sack the prime minister?”
MacNamara told him: “Do you really want us to have to advise the monarch that she’s going to have to ask you to stand down?” At this, Johnson baulked and climbed down. The letter was sent but he childishly refused to sign it.
It's appalling that events reached the point where discussions involving either the dismissal or the arrest and detention of the sitting prime minister were taking place. But this is what we were up against in Brexit. Men like Cummings and Farage and others, used Johnson as a front and were prepared to go to any lengths to get Brexit done. The lies and disinformation were just a small part of it.
They were happy to drive a coach and horses through the British constitutional norms to achieve their ends.
We also learned The Queen’s opinion of Boris Johnson. It wasn't good.
Apparently, she told someone that he was "better suited to the stage.” And in the Queen’s final days before her death a courtier confided that when Boris Johnson was mentioned, the Queen, mischief in her eye, had said: “Well at least I won’t have that idiot organising my funeral now.”
There is a lot of similarity between Johnson and Donald Trump. Both claim to be patriotic but appear to have no understanding of how democratic Western nation's institutions have built-in checks and balances designed to hold the executive in check and stop wannabe dictators.
The first reaction of both men, when confronted with the checks preventing them doing something reckless, cruel or stupid, is to look at ways of circumventing the rules. There is not the slightest acknowledgment that past legislatures put in the mechanisms to control an over-mighty leader for good reasons.
I am not sure either of them understand democracy at all.
