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If you think we have problems, what’s going on in Britain is just …

Published by digby on September 5, 2019

If you think we have problems, what’s going on in Britain is just …

by digby

This analysis of where they are at this moment is from Princeton Professor Kim Scheppele, shared with her permission:

On what happens if Johnson refuses to ask the EU for an extension: It would deepen the constitutional crisis. MPs could take him to court to force him to act, but they would no doubt only know for sure that they needed to do so when it was too late for a full judicial process to run its course before the 31 October deadline. The situation reminds me very much of the Nixon tapes case, when the president suggested that he might not follow a decision of the Supreme Court. That motivated the Supreme Court to write a unanimous opinion so that Nixon had no wiggle room to avoid the judgment. And with overwhelming public opinion on the side of the Court, Nixon complied – and resigned.

I think we’re already seeing “Nixon Tapes” logic play out here. Yesterday, the Commons got through all three required readings of the Benn Bill – and it passed in the end by an even larger margin than we saw in the vote on the procedural issue of taking up the bill in the first place. More conservative MPs are resigning from the government or the party in reaction to the government’s removal of the whip from so many long-time Conservative stalwarts, many of whom favored Brexit and voted for “the deal” multiple times but who would not countenance the chaos that would be unleased with a “no deal” Brexit.

Moreover, the filibuster attempt in the House of Lords, engineered by the government, collapsed in the face of tradition that the (unelected) Lords never stand in the way of a decisive (elective) Commons majority. And conservatives in the Lords – not the world’s most radical body — are clearly also alarmed by the government’s ferocity at delivering Brexit on the deadline no matter how many bodies they leave by the side of the road as they do.

As a result of the climb-down on the Lords’ filibuster, the Benn Bill is back on track to pass the Commons next Monday. Assuming Queen’s assent (the lack of which would create another a constitutional scandal if the government advised her to refuse her assent), then Johnson will be legally bound to avoid crashing out of the EU without a transitional agreement in place. It looks now like Johnson has been soundly defeated and his party is in shambles.

This morning brings us the news that Boris Johnson’s own brother Jo, who is a member of government in addition to being an MP, has resigned his ministerial seat and will not stand for election to the next Parliament. His tweet explained: “In recent weeks I’ve been torn between family loyalty and the national interest — it’s an unresolvable tension & time for others to take on my roles as MP and Minister.” He’s the first minister to resign from a Johnson government, and it is a deep embarrassment to the PM that his own brother who presumably knows him better than anyone has decided to jump ship just when Boris was trying to crash parliamentary government to achieve his “no deal” strategy.

Yesterday, Boris Johnson – determined to bully his way out of the bind – put before the Parliament a motion for a new general election. That motion required a two-thirds vote to pass – and it failed. Many of those thrown out of the party caucus – and therefore who will have no party to stand on for election – have also indicated that they will not stand in the next election. That leaves the Tories with many open seats to defend.

Johnson is now in more or less the same position that he was in in his botched attempt to make a dramatic entrance at the 2012 Olympics in London (when he was mayor): He’s suspended awkwardly above the fray, unable to make a dignified exit, waving UK flags to entertain the crowds. For the video, a must-see if you have not seen it before but oddly prescient even if you have, see [the video above]. The Financial Times this morning describes Johnson’s situation as “effectively trapped in 10 Downing Street by a hostile parliament.”

As a result of this collapsing political support all around, and no groundswell of public support to compensate, Michael Gove – who was the first member of Johnson’s cabinet to threaten that the government would refuse to follow the law – admitted this morning that the government would now honor the Benn Bill.

On why January 31 would be a better deadline: By that date there will surely be another general election that will provide more information about what the public actually wants. The last time there was a general election, the public still had no idea what an actual Brexit would mean. (And they knew even less when the original referendum was held in 2016.) The general election in 2017 was called by Theresa May just after she had triggered Art 50 TEU starting the formal Brexit process in EU law. She called the election with the expectation that she would get a stronger parliamentary majority to strengthen her hand in the negotiations with Brussels. Instead, her parliamentary majority collapsed, forcing her into the deeply unfortunate “confidence and supply” agreement with the DUP, which has made any government compromise on the “Irish backstop” impossible. One hopes that a general election now would make somewhat clearer what the public really wants – a no-deal Brexit, Brexit with the only deal on offer, or Remain. 

The political parties seem to awkwardly lining up to produce that information – with the remains of the Conservative Party aligning with the Brexit Party to stand for a Brexit at any cost, Labour standing for no clear idea about Brexit but perhaps willing to run a second referendum, and with the Lib Dems and Greens standing for Remain. As Robert has been arguing in his posts to the list, given the first-past-the-post system in which the plurality winner wins the seat, the Tories only need about 30-35% in a wide range of districts to win the general election. If the opposition can’t get its act together to run one candidate in each seat either for Remain or for a negotiated Brexit, then the Tories could well win a general election on a no-deal Brexit platform. But it must have come as a surprise to Johnson just how unified a new parliamentary majority became once a no-deal Brexit became the default possibility. Among other things, it peeled away a decisive number of members of his own party. If the opposition to no deal can maintain that level of coherent objection to “no deal” – but only if they can – then the general election will at least rule out one option even if it doesn’t generate a clear sense of a constructive alternative.

Of course, shuffling the deck with a new general election doesn’t mean that all problems will be solved by the end of January. But there will be more information about what the British public actually wants. That’s what they are all counting on in another extension of the deadline.

There’s more to report on the court cases: The Scottish case did not succeed in getting an injunction against prorogation and it is being argued in appeal today. The Miller/Major case in the London courts is being argued today – details to come. But prorogation is a much less serious matter now that it seems the Parliament will be able to tie the government’s hands before it is prorogued.

If you were a history student of the future reading about this time you would conclude that people were blind not to see that the world was coming apart.

Meanwhile:

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