Boris Coup: Day 13

The face of day 13: John Bercow.
One of the great Commons speakers. We shall learn to miss him.

After several days of having Parliament inflict defeat after defeat on him, day 13 is when Boris’s coup at last enters into full effect (not enough happened on day 12, which is why I had a break and didn’t dignify it with its own post). The hated Parliamentarians who have been tormenting him are to be suspended. 

I mean, not suspended as individuals, though I wouldn’t put it past him to wish he could. For now, he’s merely suspending the whole institution. That’s the measure known as prorogation.

Attentive followers of this series of posts will remember that this is was the coup act his junta first thought of. Now they’re moving into implementation. Parliament will have no voice for the next five weeks at least.

Executive authority with no scrutiny. Power without responsibility. As another Tory Prime Minister put it, the prerogative of the harlot down the ages.

Above all, it’s the autocrat’s dream.

And, boy, does he need it. I mean, look what’s been happening to him. He’s living proof of the falsehood of the old saying that the truth never hurts. Only the truth hurts, and MPs, from the Opposition but even from his own party (though he then kicks them out, so I suppose they’re the new Opposition) have been exposing the truth about BoJo.

Look at the high-profile defections. It’s pretty desperate when even your own brother finds the atmosphere you’ve created so toxic he can’t work with you. But his resignation was followed by an even more damaging one: that of Amber Rudd, the most senior of the handful of old-style, one-nation Tories (relatively moderate pragmatists as opposed to hard-right ideologues) that had managed to hang on in his government in increasing despair at his antics.

Among other reasons she cited for leaving, was “I no longer believe leaving with a deal is the government's main objective”.

Curiously, this runs counter to BoJo’s own repeated claims that he’s making progress with his negotiations. To which, it has to be said, the people on the other side of the table, the EU’s negotiators, all reply that he has made no progress whatever. You’d have to concede, wouldn’t you, that one side or the other must be lying.

So you choose. Given what we all know about Boris, which side do you think is more likely to be playing fast and loose with the truth?

And once you’ve answered that question, you can also ask yourself, is it really the case that the truth never hurts? Just look at BoJo’s face.

BoJo in disarray. As well he should be

Meanwhile, just before going into its state of suspension, the House of Commons passed one more measure, demanding publication of government documents concerning no-deal preparations, and messages from its advisers (by which I think it means principally the backroom manipulator in Number 10, Dominic Cummings).

The cheek of it! Parliament thinks the public should know what the government really believes. If that happens, how can ministers be duplicitous enough to sustain the self-delusion of Brexiters?

And then came the final sad announcement of this difficult day. John Bercow, Speaker of the House of Commons, announced that he would be resigning, either at the next election or on 31 October, whichever came first.

Many dislike him. I think historians will see him, once the dust has settled, as one of the great speakers. And, above all, as exactly what he said of himself: a man who sought to increase the power of Parliament, a backbenchers’ speaker, indeed, turning to his advantage an expression from the Brexit debate as he did himself, the backbenchers’ backstop.

As Parliament enters its period of suspension, it’s sad to see it lose such a man, such a champion of its rights against an overweening executive.

An executive which, for the next five weeks at least, will feel itself free to run amok. Truly the Boris coup. Unless a new way can be found to stop him.

A little humour, a little much-needed bloody-mindedness

Many years ago, I enjoyed watching the French film Ridicule, which focuses on how the court of Louis XVI – yes, the one who ended up losing his head on the guillotine – had made a cult of wit, deemed to be fiendishly clever though it was often also fiendishly cruel. 

The film contrasted such wit with a more British quality, which it called  ‘humour’, and clearly viewed as greatly superior.

At one point, the protagonist, a celebrated wit, meets the King who asks him to say something funny, there, immediately, on the spur of the moment.

“Be witty this minute!”

But on what subject could he be spontaneously witty? The King has a suggestion.

“Use me, for example.”

The wit has the perfect answer.

“Sire, the king is not a subject.”

I thought that was brilliant, but I suppose you could argue that it is perhaps spoiled by a deferential quality verging on the obsequious.

The contrast is emphasised at the end of the film by a French aristocrat, by then in exile in England while the revolution is running wild in his country, walking along a cliff path above a breath-taking seascape. A gust of wind takes his hat. He cries out.

“My hat! I’ve lost it.”

“Better than your head,” his English companion replies.

“Humour!” replies the Frenchman, “it’s marvellous!”

Ridicule: A hat is lost, but a head is spared

To me, that is as witty as the first rejoinder. But there is indeed a difference: it doesn’t establish any kind of hierarchy between the speakers, it shows neither deference to the other person or superiority over him, but merely shares a smile between equals. If that’s humour rather than wit then, yes, I too prefer it.

Sadly, in the last two or three years that famous British sense of humour has been a little scarce in public discourse. The leadership of both the Labour and Conservative parties take themselves far too seriously to allow of any smiles. So it was good to see something of the spirit reappear a little, even though it was  on the Tory side at the expense of Labour, and it felt more like wit than humour: the comments were designed to belittle opponents.

It seems that Environment Minister Michael Gove, even though he’s generally someone to laugh at rather than with, showed some elegance when he described MPs who hope Theresa May can get a better Brexit deal than she has so far, as swingers in their fifties hoping that Scarlett Johansson would show up at one of their parties. Quite amusing though I was glad to read that Amber Rudd, speaking up for the female side, suggested “or Pierce Brosnan”.

The Justice Secretary, David Gauke, went one further and described the official Labour Brexit position as hoping for Johansson to show up on a unicorn. Cruel but hardly unfair: Jeremy Corbyn keeps suggesting that if elected, he will somehow bring home a hugely preferable deal to May’s, with absolutely no evidence to suggest that he could do any such thing.

At least the comments were worth a smile, not something that marks British politics much these days.

But there’s another quality my compatriots regard as quintessentially British. It’s a certain cussedness, if not downright bloody-mindedness, which refuses to allow power to do just what it likes. “Over my dead body,” it seems to say, or even “over your dead body” – after all, we cut off our King’s head nearly a century and a half before the French more famously did the same to theirs.

It’s particularly welcome to see that spirit stirring again.

Twice in 24 hours, the May government has been defeated in the House of Commons by MPs across parties working to prevent a cliff-edge, no-deal Brexit. It is heartening, in this parliamentary democracy, to see parliamentarians asserting their right to resist the government.

What’s more, the initiatives came from the backbenches, not the party leaderships. Yvette Cooper, leadership candidate defeated by Corbyn led one attack. Dominic Grieve, ex-Tory Minister, guided the other. The leaders merely opposed, in the case of May who was defending her deal, or followed, in the case of Corbyn who is, well, Jeremy Corbyn.

The government was particularly angry over the second defeat, with the Speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow, who allowed the vote to take place. Precedent was against him, and it was a decision that seriously threatened the government’s usual prerogative to decide what gets discussed and what gets voted on. But what it showed was a Speaker intent on seeing all parliamentarians able to decide national policy, and not just the minority of them that form the government.

A refreshing notion.

The Speaker, though originally a Conservative himself,
getting right up Tory noses by asserting the authority of Parliament

And there’s a delicious irony to it, too. Brexiters keep saying that the aim of leaving the EU was to ‘take back control’. I don’t think this is what they had in mind, but I’m revelling in the spectacle of Parliament reasserting its authority over the Executive, which had been allowed to erode away far too far.

Now, that’s the kind of control I’m only too glad to see us taking back.

Especially as it’s so cussed. And gives us a lot to smile about.

In resisting an autocrat, does good taste really matter?

“An address by a foreign leader to both houses of Parliament is not an automatic right, it is an earned honour,” House of Commons speaker John Bercow told fellow MPs. “Before the imposition of the migrant ban, I would myself have been strongly opposed to an address by President Trump in Westminster Hall. After the imposition of the migrant ban by President Trump, I am even more strongly opposed to an address b President Trump in Westminster Hall.”

As far as the House of Commons is concerned, claimed Bercow, “I feel very strongly that our opposition to racism and sexism and our support for equality before the law and an independent judiciary are hugely important considerations.”

Pretty blunt. Especially as such values as equality before the law and an independent judiciary are fundamental to the United States Constitution itself. He seemed to be accusing Trump of denying not just international political and moral principles but those on which his own country is founded.

That accusation was made still more harshly elsewhere. This week, the generally sober German weekly Der Spiegelhit even harder, with a cover that has raised an outcry even among people who don’t see themselves as allies of Trump’s. They feel it’s over the top to depict Trump with a knife in one hand and the head of the Statue of Liberty, dripping blood, in the other, over the caption ‘America First’.

A picture that lacks charm, perhaps,
but does it lack accuracy?

Critics view the drawing as tasteless, which it certainly is. But, I’d ask, is Trump a champion of good taste himself? At one end of his violent range, he rails at opponents in abusive tweets; at the other, he tries to exclude from the US people who have already been through severe vetting and issued with a visa.

Surely a visa is a commitment to allow someone to enter? Suddenly revoking it sounds like the breach of a promise. Now that’s tasteless. And those who live by the sword, die by the sword.

This strikes me as a good time to remember words that sum up the promise to the world the US once made, a promise that embodies much that’s best in the country.

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

A land of liberty welcoming the oppressed of any other country straining for freedom.

It’s a vision of the US that makes many Americans proud. Not Trump or his supporters, though, one imagines. Unless they don’t see the contradiction between the words and the travel ban, which is is possible: their mental gymnastic ability is often breathtaking.

Of course, you know where the words most famously appear: on the plinth of the Statue of Liberty.

Could Der Spiegel be on to something?