A Harry Potter guide to Proroguing Parliament

A Brexit update for Harry Potter fans

In the latest instalment of the saga, friends overseas might have seen yesterday’s television coverage of “Privy Council” members striding breathless through Aberdeen airport, a modest facility in the suburb of Dyce (better known for its North Sea Helicopters). Jacob Rees-Mogg, the “Leader of the House of Commons”, was then whisked (or whiskied?) through the Scottish Highlands to the Queen’s summer residence at Balmoral Castle where she was asked to ‘prorogue’ the UK Parliament. If this sounds more like Harry Potter than democracy in the Twenty First Century, things are not helped by the fact that Mr Rees-Mogg bears more than a passing resemblance to Mr Potter as a middle-aged Hogwarts Professor. So you might assume that proroguing is a type of magical spell. It might as well be.

As said oft times before, the UK has no written Constitution: everything is based on precedent and case law. Brexit has been a crash course in the rules of UK parliamentary democracy for most of the British people and what “bringing back control from Brussels” means. The crash continues. The latest lesson is that the monarch can suspend the British Parliament for as long as she likes. Most years this happens for a few days or 2-3 weeks to allow for the Party Conferences to take place, this year it will be up to five weeks – unprecedented in length. Prime Minister Johnson says this is to prepare for the Queen’s speech and a new agenda of legislation under his leadership. With a majority of only one seat, even a first-year student at Hogwarts would know that this is about limiting Parliament’s ability to pass any legislation that might postpone Britain’s departure from the European Union by 31 October (Halloween – for those witches and wizards). Even after the deed is done – and Macbeth’s knife is firmly in the chest of King Duncan - the chances of a general election are so high that the Queen’s speech is more an election manifesto than parliamentary agenda-setting.

Asked last night whether such a political manoeuvre by Prime Minister Johnson was unlawful, the former Supreme Court Judge Jonathan Sumption (and fellow Etonian) said that is was most likely lawful but this did not mean it was politically right. So Mr Johnson has set a new precedent, one that we might all live to regret in years to come.

Feelings run so deep partly because both sides of the argument claim democratic legitimacy.

The “Leavers” will always invoke the 2016 Referendum and the 52% of the population who voted to leave the European Union. The means by which the UK should do so were not specified in the referendum: this could be by arrangement with the EU, or non-arrangement - a so-called “Hard Brexit” or by waving a magic wand (which seems to be the preferred approach of the Prime Minister at present). Of course, magic might just work on this occasion but is likely to leave a nasty hangover for anyone who cares too much about constitutional matters or democracy.

The “Remainers” will point to the majority of members of the current Parliament who have voted against a “Hard Brexit” as well as public opinion polls which suggest that whilst a narrow majority of people of England still want Brexit, most do not want the disruption that a no-deal Brexit will bring. I write “England” (and perhaps “Wales”) and not the UK because it is clear that the majority of people in both Scotland and Northern Ireland still do not want any kind of Brexit and that the current politics in Westminster is further threatening the future of the UK itself. Today’s resignation of the much respected Ruth Davidson as leader of the Scottish Conservative removes another piece of middle ground as UK politics continues to polarise. Most Remainers now want to second referendum but are still incoherent about the way to achieve this. Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour Party leader of the Opposition, is perhaps Boris Johnson’s greatest asset as he is has not advanced a convincing defence of our union with Europe at any point since he became leader.

So we have two polar opposite positions, both claiming to have democracy on their side. In many other countries, a written constitution might clarify how an advisory referendum plays into parliamentary democracy but not in the UK. Yes, Parliament did vote to acknowledge the outcome of the referendum but the choice was a basic binary – shall we ignore the ‘will of the people or not”? (whatever the ‘will of the people’ means in a representative democracy). Without a constitution, demands for a second referendum will only be met by demands for a third or fourth. There is no concept of thresholds or timeframes. The same too in Scotland for when the Scottish Nationalists demand to have their own second referendum on leaving the UK: it is an issue of pure political expediency. 

So the weeks ahead will be a potent mix of illusion and slight of hand. We are likely to learn even more about the arcane proceedings of the UK Parliament as we “take back control” from a European Parliament – whose rules, I must admit, have always seemed much more transparent to me (even if the colocation between Brussels and Strasbourg is a waste of carbon dioxide). The likelihood of Scotland “taking back control” from Westminster grows ever higher, so too the demands for a united Ireland. Brexit has become so polemical that it might come to be seen as the end of the UK altogether and Boris Johnson as the first ever Prime Minister of a rump English state. Those many of us who are not English, Scottish or Irish but rather a hybrid, will be forced to choose an identity and possibly a new home. Talk to anyone from the former Yugoslavia about what this feels like. During the 1970s a Yugoslav passport was the most expensive on the global black market as Yugoslavs had visa-free travel to almost anywhere in the world. We all know how that story ended as the petty nationalisms of the Balkans grew during the 1980s and then the bloodshed of the 1990s. Let’s hope that the darker magic unleashed over the weeks ahead do not bring us to this unhappy outcome.