Entitled and above the law

Any Brits not yet sure they want Donald Trump beaten in this November’s presidential election, need only look at their own Prime Minister.

Trump has been positioning himself as the law ’n’ order President. That, though, hasn’t stopped him backing people who use or threaten violence against others, just as long as the perpetrators support him and the victims don’t. In other words, he upholds the law insofar as it suits him.

The British government is now proposing to break the agreement it made with the EU less than a year ago, covering arrangements for trade within Ireland. To preserve an entirely open border between Northern Ireland and the Republic, the agreement allows that there may be tariff differences between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom.

Oddly enough, Johnson was warned when he reached the agreement that this was what it implied. Perhaps it took him seven months to work out that this really, really was the case, and now he’s flailing around looking for a way out. As I’ve pointed out before, Johnson isn’t anything like as bright as his admirers like to claim he is.

But he can’t just blame his relative dumbness for this latest action. There’s also something far more serious. Johnson simply does not see himself as governed by the same rules as anyone else. Questioned about the government’s willingness to breach its own agreement, the Northern Ireland secretary Brandon Lewis explained to the House of Commons.

Yes, this does break international law in a specific and limited way.

Trump and Johnson share more than bad hair

“Your honour, I only burgled one house at a time, so my crime was specific and limited and therefore not to be regarded as really bad,” sounds like a highly original approach to a criminal defence. I’m not sure it would really fly, though.

There is an important rule in legal practice in Britain, as I’m sure in many other jurisdictions. If a lawyer advises a client that the action they plan to take is illegal, and the client goes ahead with it anyway, the lawyer is obliged to stop acting for the client. It was entirely appropriate, therefore, that the most senior lawyer in the British Civil Service, Jonathan Jones, Head of the Government Legal Service, resigned after advising the government that its plans were illegal, a view that had been confirmed by external legal advice too.

Interestingly, it isn’t only civil servants who advise government on the law. There are two politicians who act as law officers, the Attorney General and the Solicitor General, both of them government ministers. It was, indeed, Suella Braverman who overrode Jones’s advice.

Why’s that so interesting? Well, she and the Solicitor General are bound by the same rules as Jones. They too should have advised Johnson that what he was proposing was illegal, and then resigned if went ahead anyway. Instead, Bravernman has made herself complicit in the law-breaking.

The issue of whether a breach is specific and limited is a distraction, of course. That isn’t what this behaviour is about. What matters isn’t the nature of the action, it’s who’s behind it. Trump-like, Johnson believes that any illegal behaviour is just fine, so long as it’s he and his friends who are behind it.

That’s hardly new, as it happens.

David Cameron and Boris Johnson (middle of front row)
in their Bullingdon Club days

When he was a student at Oxford, Boris Johnson, like David Cameron who was Prime Minister from 2010 to 2015, was a member of the Bullingdon Club. Its members were wealthy and entitled and behaved with contempt for others and for normal standards. They would engage in vandalism which, in any ordinary person, would have been regarded as criminal. According to an article in the Guardian from not long before Johnson became Prime Minister:

Boris was one of the big beasts of the club. He was up for anything. They treated certain types of people with absolute disdain, and referred to them as ‘plebs’ or ‘grockles’, and the police were always called ‘plod’. Their attitude was that women were there for their entertainment.

Student days, you might say. He’s moved on. Well, maybe that’s true for some people. Others, though, develop lifelong character traits at that time. The Bullingdon Club reinforces a sense of entitlement and impunity, and that does seem to have stayed with Johnson ever since.

Earlier this year, while the UK was in Covid lockdown ordered by the government itself, one of its most senior members, Johnson’s chief adviser Dominic Cummings, repeatedly breached the rules he helped craft for others. Johnson’s reaction? He defended Cummings and kept him in post.

Cummings is Johnson’s friend. He seems to be Johnson’s puppet master. Special considerations apply to him.

Johnson still sees the world as when he was a student. Law is for other people. Obeying it, or having friends obey it, is entirely optional.

It’s a central tenet of Trumpism. It’s alive and thriving in Johnson. If Trump goes, Johnson may find the atmosphere turns just a tad chillier towards illegal action in political office.

Abusive, corrupt power exercised by entitled individuals is at stake on 3 November. The election held that day is in the US. But its repercussions will extend far further.