Boris Johnson has detonated a bomb under the constitutional apparatus of the United Kingdom. The prime minister’s request to the Queen to suspend parliament for up to five weeks, ostensibly to prepare a new legislative programme, is without modern precedent. It is an intolerable attempt to silence parliament until it can no longer halt a disastrous crash-out by the UK from the EU on October 31. The seat of British democracy, long admired worldwide, is being denied a say on the most consequential decision facing the country in more than four decades. So, too, are the British people — in whose name Mr Johnson claims to be acting. It is time for parliamentarians to bring down his government in a no-confidence vote, paving the way for an election in which the people can express their will.
Britain’s representative government is an exercise in deliberative democracy which involves discussion, negotiation and inevitable compromises. It vests the power to take decisions on behalf of voters in MPs, and allows them to deliberate on matters of detail — and in the case of Brexit, the most complex demerger in postwar history, detail matters. As John Stuart Mill wrote of representative democracy: “Their part is to indicate wants, to be an organ for popular demands, and a place of adverse discussion for all opinions relating to public matters . . . and, to check by criticism, and eventually by withdrawing their support, those high public officers who really conduct the public business.”
History has shown that charlatans, demagogues and would-be dictators have little time for representative government. They seek ways around parliament before concluding it is an inconvenience. Mr Johnson may not be a tyrant, but he has set a dangerous precedent. He and the cabal around him who have chosen this revolutionary path should be careful what they wish for.