The Daily Telegraph - 29.08.2019

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1

I

s Boris Johnson’s decision to

prorogue Parliament really, as

Speaker John Bercow put it

yesterday, a “constitutional outrage”?

If the experience of Canada is anything

to go by, the answer is a resounding

no. We went through the same process

a decade ago and you can rest assured

that parliamentary democracy in the

UK is not about to be destroyed.

It started in Canada in October

2008, when prime minister Stephen

Harper of the Conservative Party

was re‑elected with a second

straight minority government. His

administration then immediately

announced a controversial policy

proposal: eliminating public financing

for political parties.

At the time, Canadian parties

earned Can$1.95 for every vote they

received in a federal election, costing

the taxpayer roughly Can$30 million

(£18 million) in total. The Tories

would have taken the biggest hit

from scrapping it but, as the most

successful party at fundraising, they

would have survived. The Liberals,

socialist‑oriented New Democrats and

separatist Bloc Québécois all relied

heavily on this slush fund and could

have been in huge financial trouble.

So the opposition revolted, in what

could be called a political coup d’etat.

The three Left‑wing parties decided

to band together to defeat the Tories

in a no‑confidence motion, set for

December 8. Liberal leader Stéphane

Dion, who had already lost his party’s

confidence and planned to step down

in May 2009, would have had his

career resuscitated and become prime

minister. He and New Democrat leader

Jack Layton planned to jointly govern

in a 24‑member cabinet, propped up

by the Bloc Québécois.

Mr Harper knew he was in dire

straits, and made a last‑ditch attempt

for political survival. On December

4, he asked for the consent of the

governor‑general, Michaëlle Jean,

the unelected ceremonial official who

serves as the Queen’s representative

in Canada, to prorogue Parliament.

The royal prerogative had been used

in 1873 by Sir John Macdonald, the

Tory prime minister, and then again in

2002 by Jean Chrétien, the Liberal PM,

but when Mr Harper’s request was

granted it marked the first time that

Canada’s Parliament had been shut

down before it had even started.

Mr Harper and the Tories

were afforded a small window of

opportunity to speak directly to

Canadians. They argued that the

opposition wasn’t going to respect

the people’s vote, but would play

political games and usurp power

in a legal, but less than democratic,

fashion.

Parliament ended up being

prorogued until January 26 2009,

but ultimately it worked. Canadians

turned against the opposition’s tactic

and the political coup d’état collapsed,

with the agreement between the

opposition parties falling apart.

The situation remained fractious for

several months and there was some

concern when MPs returned that a

new federal budget would ultimately

bring down the Tory minority

government – but Mr Harper was

having none of it. He was a strong,

confident leader who ran his two

minority governments like majorities.

Stephen Harper suspended

Parliament to stave off a

confidence vote, and came

out considerably stronger

Michael

Taube

W

hen Winston

Churchill was asked

whether Downing

Street personnel

could have a

week’s holiday for

Christmas, he declined immediately.

It was 1940 and Churchill, “surprised”

by the request, explained that he

planned to work “continuously”.

Staff were only allowed time off to

attend Divine Service, and Churchill

wished them “a busy Christmas and

a frantic New Year”.

He only took eight days’ holiday

between the start and end of the war,

and even then had cables delivered on

at least some of those days, as Andrew

Roberts recounts in his wonderful

biography. Assistants would go home

at 6am, before being back on duty

by 10am; Cabinet meetings were

routinely held well after midnight.

There was a war, and it had to be won.

It is no secret that Boris Johnson

admires Churchill: he, too, wrote a

paean to the great man, and (perhaps

too obviously) would love, in time, to

be seen as his 21st‑century incarnation,

a thought that used to amuse his

opponents but now infuriates them.

It would, of course, be preposterous

even to begin to equate our present

political and constitutional crisis with

the Second World War, humanity’s

darkest hour. But the No 10 operation’s

Stakhanovite work rate, its extreme

centralisation of power, its obsession

with military history, psychology and

thinking, its determination to force the

lumbering British state to move more

nimbly, all confirm that it is acting as

if we, too, were in the midst of a real,

existential conflict.

Those who thought that Johnson’s

administration would be amateurish,

lackadaisical or downright lazy still

cannot quite believe how badly they

misjudged him. This Government is

modelled on a wartime operation,

fortunately minus the actual war. The

Remainer ultras, used to the defeatism

of the May regime, or even the too‑

clever‑by‑half, fly‑by‑the‑seat‑of‑our‑

pants approach of the Cameron years,

have been wrong‑footed. They are too

angry to think calmly, and are falling

into the ever‑more complex traps

laid for them by Dominic Cummings,

Johnson’s chief adviser.

It is impossible to understand the

past 24 hours without realising that

No 10 genuinely believes that this

is a historic “do or die” moment,

and not just because of Brexit. It is

convinced that it has to work harder,

faster and more intelligently than its

opponents, leveraging the power of the

executive and pushing constitutional

conventions to their limits to defeat

the enemy. Like the most ruthless

of generals, it is prepared to incur

losses along the way, and to sacrifice

anything or anybody non‑essential,

in pursuit of the ultimate prize. It is

ready to take as many massive risks

as necessary, as military leaders must

always do in war time.

Hence yesterday’s latest, explosive

chess move: it fell well short of

proroguing Parliament in the

full sense of that term, and was

therefore constitutionally proper.

But, by reducing the time available

to Remainers to overthrow the

Government or halt Brexit, it has

wreaked havoc with their planning,

and driven them into another wild

rage.

The reality is that the Boris/

Cummings agenda is extraordinarily

ambitious, and amounts to the

greatest political gamble in recent

history. They want to push through

a real Brexit, preferably with a

massively better deal than May’s; win

a majority in Parliament for a Tory

party reshaped along Johnsonite

lines; destroy Jeremy Corbyn and

force the Labour Party back on to the

political centre‑ground; eliminate the

need for the Brexit Party; and recast

the country with historic reforms

to education, taxation, planning,

immigration and economic policy.

For Johnson to pull all of this off

would require him not just to win the

looming general election but probably

to stay in power for a decade, allowing

him to emerge as the third great Tory

leader of the past 100 years. Whether

they like it or not, he is the centre‑

Right’s last and only chance. He either

gets his way, or the Tories will break

up and the most socialist Labour Party

in our history will seize power, backed

by all the Left‑wing parties, including

the SNP. Under such a nightmare

scenario, Brexit would be made to

fail disastrously, discrediting the idea

entirely, or it would be cancelled.

The next few weeks – and especially

next Tuesday, Wednesday and

Thursday – will thus be the most

important period for the future of the

UK at least since the Falklands War.

Had Lady Thatcher lost, pro‑Soviet

socialism would have triumphed

in Britain. Her victory allowed a

No 10 genuinely believes

that this is a ‘do or die’

moment, and not solely

for the Brexit project

allisTer

heaTh

ross clark

Prorogation did Canada’s democracy no harm

I fear this is a

move that the

Government will

come to regret

I

s Boris Johnson’s decision

to ask the Queen to

suspend Parliament for a

few weeks really a “coup” or

“constitutional outrage”?

Hardly. A tactical use of

long‑established rules is a

more accurate description.

Many Brexiteers will

support him for acting

decisively, in an attempt to

stymie the anti‑democratic

efforts of parliamentary

Remainers. But I can’t help

worrying that we may come

to regret it.

One day he, or another

Tory, might find themselves

sitting in the Leader of the

Opposition’s place in the

Commons confronting

Prime Minister Jeremy

Corbyn, John McDonnell or

Rebecca Long‑Bailey. How

is he going to react when

they announce that they

have asked the Queen to

prorogue Parliament to stop

an expected no confidence

vote or prevent opposition

to some Marxist piece of

legislation?

That is the trouble with

interpreting the rules to

your advantage, especially

when we have an unwritten

constitution. Try something

once and it tends to become

convention – your

successors will assume the

right to do it, too. When the

Conservatives find

themselves in opposition,

they will have lost all moral

right to complain about the

attempts of subsequent

governments to twist the

rules in this direction.

Moreover, suspending

Parliament leaves Boris open

to a powerful counter‑

argument. Wasn’t leaving

the EU supposed to be all

about regaining

parliamentary sovereignty

from Brussels? He

campaigned for Leave on the

slogan “Take Back Control”.

For most voters that will sit

uneasily alongside the image

of a British Prime Minister

seizing back control from

Parliament.

It is debatable whether he

even needed to protect

himself from the Commons,

in this way. It is plain that

the counter‑revolutionary

forces of Remain are

He regained his footing, survived the

political tide and eventually won a

majority in 2011.

The similarities between Canada’s

prorogation and the UK’s are striking.

Mr Johnson, like Mr Harper,

faces the threat of his Government

collapsing over a single divisive issue

while the Labour and Liberal parties

are perfectly content to play political

games in the hope of usurping power.

Proroguing Parliament isn’t a

desirable solution, but Canada has

shown it can be used to calm a fiery

political situation and that it could

enable Mr Johnson to get back to the

pressing issues at hand.

When Canada faced a prorogued

Parliament, politicians claimed their

parliamentary democracy would

ultimately suffer and die, but these

political Chicken Littles were proved

wrong.

The episode did not set a terrible

precedent of governments using

prorogations as a tactical way to

cling to power. Indeed, Canada’s

parliamentary democracy is alive and

well. I can confidently predict the

same thing will happen in the UK.

Michael Taube, a Troy Media

syndicated columnist, was previously

an adviser to Stephen Harper

This is Boris’s Falklands War, and he

will do everything he can to win it

capitalist revolution and helped bring

about the triumph of the free world.

The challenge today is just as great,

but the present Prime Minister’s

position is objectively far weaker than

the Iron Lady’s ever was.

Johnson doesn’t really have a

parliamentary majority, and some of

his dissidents are fanatics who are

willing to let in Corbyn. The May/

Hammond strategy has precipitated

the destruction of the constitution,

with a broken Parliament now

ensuring the country is ungovernable.

The PM needs to keep enough

Remainers on side not to lose a

no‑confidence vote, and that requires

negotiation with the EU. But doing so

means focusing on the backstop for

now, which risks alienating Brexiteers.

Boris and Sajid Javid need to work

closely on a Budget with massive

tax cuts at its heart; the Treasury

establishment will try its best to

oppose this. Javid must stand firm and

prepare the greatest Tory, supply‑side

Budget in 30 years, even if the deficit

increases.

The obstacles are too many to

list. If Boris does lose a vote of

confidence, will he really be able to

delay the election to November? And

if Parliament seizes control, will he

be able to bypass MPs by dissolving

Parliament with Corbyn’s help? Is

there any chance of passing any kind

of new deal now? Is there any hope

that Johnson could win a pre‑Brexit

election, given that Nigel Farage

won’t stand down his troops?

Yet if the past month has taught us

anything it is that politics is not like

physics: there is no immutable law of

gravity. Brilliant political leadership

can overcome almost everything – or

at least, as he rereads his biography of

Churchill, that is what Johnson will be

telling himself. Let us hope he is right.

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hopelessly divided and will

fail to agree on anything.

Some want to reverse the

referendum, others just

want to avoid a no‑deal.

Corbyn wants to bring

about his socialist dream,

Caroline Lucas wants her

eco‑feminist paradise and

the SNP want to exploit

Brexit in order to force their

own referendum.

Would it not have been

better to let the Remainers

have another go at seizing

control of the Commons?

The last time, remember,

MPs failed to back a single

alternative to a no‑deal

Brexit.

He could have let them

have their votes on staying

in the EU, entering a

customs union and what‑

have‑you. And if he

succeeds in negotiating a

deal with Brussels he could

have put it before the

Commons with a clause

ensuring that the alternative

was no deal.

Had MPs voted to force

him to go back to Brussels

and ask for an extension to

Article 50, he could have

gone – and refused to pay

another penny, ensuring his

request was rejected.

All this might happen

anyway when Parliament

reconvenes.

But it will now be against

the backdrop of the

accusations that the Prime

Minister has ruthlessly

tried to override

parliamentary democracy.

Whether true or not, it is

a charge which is going to

stick with many people.

I can see why it is so

tempting to play the

arch‑Remainers at their own

game – using every ruse to

get their way.

But while proroguing

Parliament for a month is far

from the constitutional

outrage which it has been

portrayed, I fear it is a move

the Government may come

to regret.

follow Allister

Heath on Twitter

@AllisterHeath;

read More at

telegraph.co.uk/

opinion

follow Michael

Taube on Twitter

@michaeltaube;

read More at

telegraph.co.uk/

opinion

follow Ross Clark on

Twitter @RossjournoClark;

read More at

telegraph.co.uk/opinion

Comment

18 ***^ Thursday 29 August 2019 The Daily Telegraph

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