Blindingly Obvious

Ladies and gentlemen, the First Minister of Scotland.

Literally wondering if Boris von Pfeffel Kemal aka Johnson was getting advice from Donald Trump in their sideline conference in Biarritz over the weekend, because that's how bad today's move is looking—asking the Queen to prorogue Parliament for five weeks, ostensibly (this would be the normal reason, but a normal prorogation would last five or six days) to give him time, as the new prime minister, to prepare his government's legislative program, but obviously being Johnson he hasn't got a legislative program and plans to wing it, and the real reason is to render them unable to act to stop Britain from falling involuntarily out of the European Union on the Halloween deadline.

Or as John Bercow, speaker of the House of Commons (in becoming speaker, he was required to give up all party affiliation, but he was a Conservative until then) put it:

"However it is dressed up, it is blindingly obvious that the purpose of the prorogation now would be to stop parliament debating Brexit and performing its duty in shaping a course for the country."

"At this time, one of the most challenging periods in our nation's history, it is vital that our elected parliament has its say. After all, we live in a parliamentary democracy.

"Shutting down parliament would be an offence against the democratic process and the rights of parliamentarians as the people's elected representatives. Surely at this early stage in his premiership, the prime minister should be seeking to establish rather than undermine his democratic credentials and indeed his commitment to parliamentary democracy."

That's what's Trumpy about it—the transparency of the pretext. Johnson doesn't care that everybody knows it's a fraud, as long as it enables him to get his way. (In the same way as Trump didn't mind everybody knowing that the "travel ban" for which he fought so hard without being able to offer any reasons for it was a fraud, as long as his own voters believed he had kept his unconstitutional campaign promise to ban Muslims from the country.)

Somebody on NPR was speculating this morning that his real reason might be to give himself more room to negotiate a real Brexit deal with the Europeans to sell to Parliament in October, but I think that runs counter to the fact that there is no such deal, as has been repeatedly demonstrated for the last couple of years, that can make it through the Commons (where the Tory majority is now down to a single vacillating vote). And the rage running through the British political world right now is a sign that he means exactly what they think he means. A petition to stop the prorogation got 350,000 signatures in a few hours, Nicola Sturgeon told BBC that Johnson is a "tinpot dictator", and Parliament is simmering with arcane maneuvers, like that of former attorney general Dominic Grieve, said to be working with a group of MPs on what's called a "humble address":

“It’s possible to do a humble address to the Queen to say that we should not prorogue. Boris Johnson must assume he is going to escape parliament and I don’t think he is.”

A humble address is binding and can be used by the opposition to express its strength of feeling to government or request that it hand over documents.

It has rarely been deployed in the past 200 years but Labour successfully used it in 2017 to make a direct appeal to the Queen that the government make public its economic impact assessments of Brexit.

(Not that the Queen actually makes the decision as to whether the government must respond; it's the speaker.)

Another group is trying to get an injunction to stop the prorogation out of the Scottish court system:

A cross-party group of MPs is seeking an emergency ruling from Scotland's top court to put the brakes on Boris Johnson's request to suspend parliament.

Amid outrage at the plans, the group of more than 70 pro-EU parliamentarians filed a fast-track motion at the Court of Session in Edinburgh on Wednesday for an interim injunction to prevent parliament from being prorogued ahead of the Brexit deadline.

The legal bid, which was launched last month, had been due to be heard on 6 September, however The Independent understands it is now scheduled for Thursday.

And of course the Labour Party will be preparing a no-confidence motion, as our president noted on the Twitter, though he may not be the best judge of how "hard" that would be.

Stephen Bush at The New Statesman notes that

The important thing about John Bercow’s remarks that the government is committing a “constitutional outrage” isn’t whether he’s correct or not – it’s that if he thinks the government is committing a constitutional outrage, he is more likely to allow MPs constitutional and legislative leeway to prevent a no-deal Brexit next week. 

and that, I believe, may be key: all sorts of people who are neutral by obligation (from Bercow to Her Majesty) or divided by nature (the entire British public) have just had it with this preposterous charade, and they can put a stop to it.