Boris Johnson’s decision to suspend parliament for over a month in the middle of the worst crisis Britain has faced since the second world war was met with plaudits among hardline Tory Brexiters, but brickbats from opposition figures. Within the Conservative Party, former PM John Major said that he had “no doubt that the prime minister’s motive in seeking prorogation is to bypass a sovereign parliament that opposes his policy on Brexit.” John Bercow, the Speaker of the House of Commons, described the move as a “constitutional outrage.”
More than ever, the rolling Brexit crisis is laying bare the inadequacies of the British constitution. In a recent column, Chris Patten asked whether Britain was becoming a failed state and concluded that the country’s institutions and constitution were indeed at risk. This was an extraordinary diagnosis from a former chairman of the Conservative Party. Now, after the move to suspend parliament for up to five weeks, it is apparent that if anything Patten understated the gravity of the crisis. Johnson’s readiness to trample shamelessly over parliamentary democracy is turning Britain into a prorogue state.
Hard though it might now seem to believe, the famously unwritten British constitution was once revered as a model for political governance. Its virtues were real even though (or arguably because) there was no underpinning legal document such as America’s constitution or Germany’s basic law. The lack of a formal written constitution made for flexibility, creating an ability for Britain’s governing arrangements to evolve both through precedent and statute. Combined with a first-past-the-post electoral system, anchored by strong and healthy parties, which generally delivered majorities in the House of Commons, the framework supported strong and effective government subject to parliamentary scrutiny.
But those virtues rested implicitly upon ministers abiding by conventions. Prorogation has been for example what the House of Commons Library describes as a “formality in the UK for more than a century.” The power to suspend parliament, nominally that of the Crown but in reality that of the prime minister, has long been used typically for a brief period every year. It is a means of clearing the decks for a new session of parliament, introduced by a Queen’s speech setting out the government’s agenda over the coming 12 months or so. Jacob Rees-Mogg, leader of the House of Commons, claimed today that the prime minister’s use of prorogation conforms with that precedent, describing the procedure as “a completely routine part of our constitution.” But this is sophistry given the fact that it coincides with a crucial end-stage in the Brexit saga and is much longer than the usual period during which parliament is suspended.
As expected, the Queen acquiesced in Johnson’s controversial decision. This was in keeping with constitutional convention, ensuring her neutrality. Gus O’Donnell, a former cabinet secretary and head of the civil service, and Vernon Bogdanor, a politics professor, concurred yesterday in saying this was the right call for the monarch. But the prime minister’s provocation exposes another longstanding weakness in the way Britain is governed: it does not have a meaningful head of state.
A monarch that is above politics does have the merit that she can be a point of unity in an otherwise divided country. But a figurehead is just that (and can be discredited by the private lives of the royal family). By disempowering the Queen, Britain lacks someone who can act as a guardian of the constitution. In Italy for example the president has real clout in determining the formation of governments, and has been presiding over efforts to create a new one that would thwart Matteo Salvini’s attempt to precipitate an early election in which he would reap gains from his populism. Making matters worse, the Crown’s residual yet still substantial “prerogative” powers (such as prorogation) to act without parliamentary consent belong in reality to the prime minister of the day.
Johnson is undoubtedly playing fast and loose with the rules but he is able to do so only because the British constitution has become fragile. The checks and balances that evolved over time for a parliamentary democracy have not been adjusted for the use of referendums. These have been introduced haphazardly and without safeguards, such as requiring a supermajority rather than just surmounting 50 per cent of the vote for a major constitutional change.
That has created a clash between plebiscitary and parliamentary forms of decision-making. Both the prime minister and his opponents appeal to democracy. However, one seeks to enforce the “will of the people” as supposedly expressed in the 2016 referendum (despite the fact that the Leave campaign backed an exit with a deal) whereas the other upholds parliamentary sovereignty.
As important, the two main political parties that underpin Britain’s parliamentary democracy have become radicalised through giving their members the power to elect their leaders. That has landed Labour with Jeremy Corbyn, whose inadequate leadership has contributed to the Brexit impasse. The Conservative Party once had millions of members, ensuring that they were not that far removed from the centre of gravity of voters. The party that elected Johnson had 160,000 members, whose attitudes are far more extreme than those of the electorate as a whole.
Britain’s constitutional malaise is both a cause and a product of the referendum to leave the European Union. Whatever the outcome of Brexit, Britain’s governance must be dragged into the 21st century. Whether or not that will be a constitution for the United Kingdom or for just England and Wales—an outcome becoming more likely owing to Johnson’s irresponsible behaviour—remains to be seen.
