A Little Hypocrisy and Judgmentalism from the Supreme Court Judges

On the face of it, the Supreme Court’s verdict against Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s prorogation of Parliament (“without reasonable justification”) seems clear and fair, based on the fact that prorogation frustrated Parliament’s ability to scrutinise the executive, the Conservative government.

However, there are a couple of reasons for some disquiet regarding the verdict. Firstly, Prime Minister Johnson gave a reason for the prorogation, in order to prepare for Her Majesty’s speech on his “domestic agenda” – policies – on October 14. The Supreme Court therefore had to go beyond their legal remit and make a judgement on whether the Prime Minister’s reason was valid or whether he was being disingenuous. Whatever the judges may have said, they must have chosen the latter, with the precedent set that Supreme Court judges are free to assess the Prime Minister’s probity in any future case.

Secondly, the prevailing circumstances are that Parliament has a majority of members’ votes over those of the Conservative Government.  In fact, with the help of the Speaker, Hillary Benn and Oliver Letwin took control of the order paper, effectively taking over Parliament. This was specifically to impose the will of an EU-remaining Parliament on the executive, and opposing the will of the people who voted to leave the EU.

Without a parliamentary majority, it can hardly be said that the minority Conservative government are the executive. This leaves the Parliamentary majority to legislate without accountability to anyone, and with the ability to prevent an election within the next two years. This clearly isn’t democratic but appears of little interest to the Supreme Court who are content to leave an unelected Parliamentary-majority executive free to legislate for the next two years under no scrutiny: Something the judges were trying to prevent.