Johnson’s chicanery needs to be stopped

SO, there we have it — a Boris Johnson-led Conservative Government has publicly declared that it is actively working to find a way round the law. What an admission. What an example to all the law-abiding citizens of this country, for whom the law is a bulwark against anarchism, dictatorship and oppression — indeed, an expression of the democratic freedom that thousands of our fellow citizens gave their lives to uphold. What an insult to them, in particular.

However, should we be surprised that Johnson and his Svengali, Cummings, will resort to such tactics? On the one hand, Johnson apes his wealthy friends to whom tax-dodging is part and parcel of their DNA, while Cummings, by all accounts, is the supreme anarchist for whom, presumably, the law represents an Establishment inconvenience to be flouted in any way possible.

Johnson pejoratively labels a democratic law a “surrender Bill”, thus mocking and demeaning a legal process by the Parliament of the United Kingdom without in any way detailing what his alternative is. The plain fact is he has not got an alternative and sees a ‘no-deal’ as a route for his own personal advancement, irrespective of the collateral damage that will be occasioned to ordinary, working people.

All of this, again, is his way of detracting from his own and his Government’s inadequacies, as per his unseemly rant in the Commons, when again he had no answer/solution, no humility, or remorse.

Sir John Major has unveiled an arcane process which the Johnson Government may try to utilise to circumvent the law — ie the use of an Order in Council given down by Privy Councillors in a process answerable neither to Parliament nor the Monarch.

One can only hope that, whatever piece of political chicanery Johnson and his unelected, unaccountable cohorts may stoop to, that the united parliamentary Opposition will counter it using the democratic legal process. As many commentators have noted, whether you are for Leave or Remain, no one at any stage voted for a no-deal.

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