Brexit has infected British politics from top to bottom
To cure the fever will require another vote
NO BRITISH INSTITUTION is any longer immune to the Brexit virus. On September 24th the Supreme Court ruled that the queen herself had been led to act unlawfully when her prime minister, Boris Johnson, advised her to suspend Parliament in the run-up to Britain’s departure from the European Union (see article). Unanimous, the judges ruled that the government had not provided “any reason—let alone a good reason” for this intrusion on “the fundamentals of democracy”. The very next day MPs returned to work triumphant.
This was the worst week in Mr Johnson’s extraordinarily bad two months in office. The unelected prime minister has lost every vote he has faced, squandered his majority and fired a score of MPs from his Conservative Party. Following the court’s ruling, he was dragged back from a UN summit in New York to face the music in Westminster, where MPs now have ample time to grill him not only about his fraying Brexit plans but also on allegations of corruption during his stint as mayor of London.
This article appeared in the Leaders section of the print edition under the headline "The reckoning"
From the September 28th 2019 edition
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