Leading historian: Legal but morally questionable? This is how democracies die
One of the world’s leading historians fears Boris Johnson’s suspension of parliament could fatally weaken British democracy.
Timothy Snyder, a professor at Yale and author of On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons From The Twentieth Century, told The Sunday Post: “Every child can see that it is all about avoiding parliament considering the most important issue in British public life since 1939.
“It is completely obvious that the formal rule is being invoked in order to avoid a discussion of the greatest possible substance on the future and probably the existence of the UK.
“This is how democracies die. It is not usually a violent revolution or a coup d’état. It is usually people at the centre of the system doing something that is technically legal but in violation of the spirit of the law.
“It is absolutely textbook. This is the way German democracy died in the inter-war period. This is what authoritarians do. They find something that is technically legal then they push it well beyond the limits that were intended.”
The Prime Minister’s chief strategist, Dominic Cummings, is said to despise Whitehall conventions and traditions and said in a 2014 speech the civil service should be “an idea for history books”.
Professor Snyder said: “Prorogation is not being used for its intended purpose, which was to help parliament to function. It is being used to make parliament dysfunctional.
“This is a typical authoritarian move. You use a system against itself and once you succeed people don’t believe in the system. Then you can start saying we always have to govern by exception.
“This is an important moment because Britain is a parliamentary system and if you can do it in Britain then you can do it anywhere.
“Even if you believe Brexit is a good thing, you can’t allow it to happen this way. You can’t allow major decisions in public life to happen with normal parliamentary deliberation.
“There should be Conservatives who say, ‘Yes, I would like to get to Brexit but I’m not willing to alter the British constitutional system in order to get there’.
“After all, the whole point of Brexit was supposed to be protect the British constitutional system.
“If you undo the British constitutional system to get there, what have you achieved?”
The academic, who studied at Oxford, has previously written that Brexit would lead to Scotland and Northern Ireland leaving the UK.
“Scottish independence has just been made much more likely than it was,” he said.