Boris Coup: Day 28

Isn’t it great? 

Today, on day 28 of his coup, we have official confirmation, from the highest court in the land, that Boris Johnson broke the law. Which means trying to avoid scrutiny by proroguing parliament wasn’t just a naked power grab, it was illegal.

The UK Supreme Court on its way to the ruling that
outlaws Boris and his coup

To those who’ve claimed that my use of the word ‘coup’ is over the top for what Boris has done, let me just say that an illegal power grab seems to be the textbook definition of a coup. No tanks on the streets, sure, but a coup all the same.

For the moment, the UK remains, however, a state ruled by law. This decision ought therefore to be obeyed. Johnson says he will respect it, but who knows? He broke the law with the prorogation itself, so no one can say with any certainty that he won’t try to break it again. One can only hope, but watch him carefully.

If Parliament holds its nerve, it can even bring him down now. If enough Tories, or more to the point ex-Tories kicked out by Boris, join with enough Opposition MPs, they can pass a no-confidence vote.

Then things would get really interesting. There would be an opportunity to form what many are calling for, a government of national unity. That’s when we’d come up against another hitch. Jeremy Corbyn, leader in name of the Labour Party, has said he would not support anyone other than himself to lead such a government. Few MPs – indeed few voters – would have any more confidence in him than in BoJo.

After all, why should they? Who led the fight back against BoJo’s coup, the one that led to today’s Supreme Court Decision against him? The Scottish and Welsh governments, and a series of individuals, most notably Gina Miller who has now won two major decisions against the government (the other one was to force a parliamentary vote on Brexit at all).

But where was Corbyn?

Why, he was plotting against his Deputy Tom Watson. He confirmed as much to Andrew Marr on BBC TV on Sunday, when he said that, while he knew there were conversations “about the role of deputy leader”, he “did not know that that particular motion was going to be put at that time.”

A non-denial denial. In other words, he knew about the plot. And to all those who say that Owen Smith mounted a coup against Corbyn when he ran for leader, I would reply that it was a legitimate political action, respecting the Labour Party Constitution, open, transparent, followed by debate, and with a result accepted by the loser.

What happened in the move against Watson was that a motion to abolish his position was brought in, without notice, at the end of a meeting, to try to nod it through with minimal debate. Now that’s a coup attempt.

So Corbyn played a minimal role in the fight against the Boris coup. And he showed himself capable of being as nasty and underhand as any machine politician. Indeed, rather like Boris himself.

So why would anyone want him to take over?

If a unity government is to be formed, therefore, there will be a lot of obstacles to overcome. We’d need both Labour and Tory MPs to rebel. In short, we’d need MPs to stand up to the deplorable leaders both main parties have inflicted on themselves.

Of course, we shouldn’t write off BoJo yet. There’s a chance he may just brave his opponents, even in defiance of the law. Or then again he may play on Corbyn’s obsessive ambition to get to Downing Street: Jeremy may not be able to resist the temptation of an election, even though he’s fifteen points behind in the polls.

Then Boris might get back with a Parliamentary majority. Which would mean he could exercise personal rule even within the law. Giving us hard Brexit, subservience to the US and an assault on basic rights.

Then we’ll really know what “taking back control” means.

Andrew hasn't marred my pleasure

My good friend Ronnie wrote to me yesterday to question my continued commitment to blogging, given how comprehensively bloggers had just been ‘marred’.

The reference was to a recent diatribe against blogging by someone I rather admire, Andrew Marr, journalist, broadcaster and highly talented populariser of history. Still, my view, to adapt an old saying, is that what is marred can be mended, and his indictment hasn’t left me downhearted at all.

It’s quite an indictment, though. ‘A lot of bloggers seem to be socially inadequate, pimpled, single, slightly seedy, bald, cauliflower-nosed young men sitting in their mother's basements and ranting,’ he ranted at a recent literary festival in Cheltenham. ‘They are very angry people,’ he went on, and though he admits that ‘many of us are angry people at times’, he doesn’t buy the concept of citizen journalism, which he describes as ‘the spewings and rantings of very drunk people late at night. It is fantastic at times but it is not going to replace journalism.’

Well, Marr is an outstanding writer and it would be a great pity to lose his excellent work with its insights and its lucid explanations of complex matters. It would be just as great a pity to have to do without the journalism of the correspondents on the better papers, such as the Independent or the Guardian here in Britain. Certainly, blogging isn’t going to replace them.

But sadly these aren’t the only journalists. To take another British example, how about this extract from today’s Daily Mail?

‘I had a fling with a waitress and it made me feel manly, says David Arquette.’ How many people know who David Arquette is? How many care?

We’re told that the author of this exposure of skuldeggery is a ‘Daily Mail reporter’. It seems they’re proud of it. Glancing further down, we can see why. There’s an appropriate photograph of the waitress in question, followed by the riveting information that ‘as Arquette went public over their encounter, the brunette beauty broke cover to attend her no doubt daily gym sessions dressed in a flimsy vest, leggings and a low-cut sports bra.’

I particularly liked that ‘no doubt’. Who needs facts when you can speculate and pass it off as research?

Now in the past I’ve contributed posts to a Labour Party blog and I’ve had some pretty ranty replies, I can tell you. On this blog, of course, the comments have always been courteous, kind and sensitive. Out there, in the big-blog world, they’re a bit more like One flew over the cuckoo’s nest. Certainly, that kind of stuff is pretty unappealing, and it can’t hold a candle to our best journalism.

But what about our worst journalism? Marr needs to realise that there’s another end of the spectrum from his own. If the journalism of the Mail and our other tabloids, here, on the Continent or across the Atlantic, were replaced by even the least inspiring blogging, would it really matter? Would we be any the worse off? Are the bloggers really that much worse?

In any case, my reply to Ronnie is simple. I don’t write for Andrew Marr’s pleasure but for my own and, I hope, for my readers’.

So I'll keep enjoying Andrew Marr's work on many topics. But when it comes to blogging, I'm afraid I won't be paying a lot of attention to his views.