Our Consitutional Circumstances

I have just been watching the court case in the Supreme Court which is currently ongoing about the decision of the Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, to prorogue parliament. If this is not a time to write a blog post then I don’t know what is. But don’t worry I won’t go on too much because I, like everyone else, don’t know what the outcome will be. All I know is that it will be very important.

I have been following this not only because like many people I’m still not sure what the plan is for the impending date which we have set for Brexit but also because part of the saga unfolded just up the road from where I live. I was at the Court of Session in Edinburgh when the first hearing’s judgement was in favour of Boris Johnson. If that had been the end of the story I would not be writing this now. A week later, after an appeal, the more senior Inner Court of the Court of Session made a judgement against Boris Johnson saying that his advice to the Queen to prorogue parliament was a ploy to silence the parliament and was therefore “unlawful”. I wasn’t in the chamber that day much to my disappointment.

Now the appeal against that judgement has been taken to the highest possible court in the UK, the Supreme Court, in which 11 judges must now preside and make their decision and I was just watching the statement by the lawyer arguing the case against Boris Johnson and his government. Perhaps not the most riveting thing to watch but he certainly made a compelling argument. It was also interesting to see some of the faces in the audience and, to my mind, the glares they made towards judges who  even made a slight suggestion that they might agree with what he was putting forward.

As I await the judgement I can’t help thinking that whatever the outcome this has demonstrated how the cracks in the UK constitution have been growing wider and wider, and I wonder how it will be possible after this for those cracks to close up again. It is not the process itself which has caused the problem, every step along the way due process has been observed. It just shows that whatever the system, there is none that is perfect, there are none that have been able to prevent the machinations of people from causing some form of political upheaval, even in our modern society. You would think that such things were a thing of the past, but I guess that in all times and in all places people have had to live with the realities of governement, whatever form that takes, in their lives. I do hope though that someone steps forward to repair those cracks because until they do they will just get bigger and bigger. And let’s see what the judgement is.

You should be able to follow it as well at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-politics-49738480

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