Boris Coup: Day 15

Day 15 of the coup and, it has to be said, it still isn’t all going Boris’s way.

At least, he’s finally got his prorogation of Parliament in place. On Monday evening. Just as soon as he possibly could. On the way, in the small hours of Tuesday morning, he did have to lose one more vote – maintaining his 100% record of six votes lost out of six votes held – when the House of Commons failed to agree his second demand for a snap general election.

But at any he’s got those irritating parliamentarians out of his hair for the next few weeks. Just like Charles I did when he got fed up with them. Though, to be fair, that didn’t work out all that well for Charles, the only king literally to have lost his head.

In any case, day 15 saw the announcement that the highest court in Scotland decided that the prorogation was illegal and declared it null and void. They didn’t actually order that Parliament be recalled, leaving it to the Supreme Court in London to confirm or deny its judgement and decide whether to issue the order.

Still, however the Supreme Court decides, it was good to see one set of judges saying that it was unconstitutional to suspend Parliament, just because it was annoying the Prime Minister. Most of us would feel the same. Well, most of us who think that Parliamentary Democracy isn’t just an empty phrase.

Tom Watson: only Deputy Leader of Labour
But showing a lot more leadership than his nominal boss

Meanwhile, on the other side of the now-suspended House of Commons, Tom Watson, Deputy Leader of the Labour Party is due to speak out for a clear decision by the Party that it demands a new referendum even before an election – Watson reckons that an election can’t decide the Brexit issue – and that it explicitly backs remaining in the EU in that referendum.

An excellent plan. We’ve had three years of trying to find a Brexit formula that will please a majority of the people, and have been unable to come up with one. Doesn’t rather suggest that the problem isn’t about one deal rather than another, but about Brexit itself? There simply is no Brexit deal that will leave us better off.

So why not oppose Brexit altogether?

And Labour, committed as it is to protecting the interests of the many, should surely be opposing a measure that would leave the many less well of than today.

It’s good to see leadership from the Labour Party. Though disheartening that it has, once more, to come from someone other than the nominal leader.

That leader, Jeremy Corbyn himself, is sticking firmly on the fence on Brexit, and keeps insisting that he wants to see a general election soon. Though not quite as soon as he was demanding a while back. It must suit him to have the excuse of wanting to get a no-deal Brexit firmly off the table first, since he must have worked out that with the polls as bad for Labour as they now are, he would be unlikely to win a majority just now.

The interesting thing is that the Tories, too, are doing badly. Theresa May must be getting some consolation for having been driven out of office by the ghastly BoJo when she sees what a mess he’s in. She must be splitting her sides.

In fact, one of the eye-openers of the first 15 days of the coup is what it has revealed about Boris. Yes, he’s just as unpleasant, narcissistic and authoritarian as most of us imagined. But, and this has certainly come as a surprise to me, he’s proved himself a far less effective politician than I thought.

My fear has been that all his car crashes of the last few days might just make his supporters stronger in their backing, seeing him as the victim of the vile tricks of those wicked Parliamentarians. But the last two polls have his lead down in the low single figures, from the low double figures. Still a lead – no good news for Corbyn there – but far less than before the coup.

So it looks like he may be a significantly less redoubtable figure than I had feared.

For that relief, at least, let’s be profoundly grateful…