An affront to democracy in the name of the people
Who’s tipping the balance where you are: the People or the State? Let’s take a quick survey of the international headlines. In Hong Kong, leaders of the 12 week long protests against a Beijing extradition law are being arrested and China’s military are bringing new troops to the territory, but the protesters have not diminished. In Kashmir, villagers are quoted telling reporters “They kicked us, beat us with sticks, gave us electric shocks.” In the United Kingdom, thousands of people in cities across the country demonstrated against the government suspending Parliament. There’s a sense that around the world something is shifting in the way people are responding to the exercise of power.
It’s been another dramatic week in the UK over Brexit, with breath-taking speed, the landscape of politics here is being transformed but nobody knows yet what this will mean for government and people.
The constitutional crisis that has been simmering over Brexit is getting even more heated and the public mood is spiking. On Wednesday the new administration of Prime Minister Boris Johnson is at the very least, testing the limits of democracy, by suspending parliament for five weeks in the run-up to the 31st of October when he has promised that the UK is to leave the EU, even if there are no agreements in place to soften the impact to people and businesses on that date.
The furious response by opposition politicians and the public is now beyond the debate of whether or not to remain or leave the EU, beyond whether the UK will leave with or without a deal with an EU in place. It has now become about democracy itself, underlining the sense that this is indeed an existential matter for the UK.
The Financial Times, very much an establishment broadsheet newspaper abides by the motto “Without fear and without favour,” and since 1888, “has argued for free markets, free trade, and liberal democracy.” On Thursday, its editorial board declared: “MPs must pass a no-confidence vote in the government and trigger a general election... Boris Johnson has detonated a bomb under the constitutional apparatus of the United Kingdom.
“It is time for parliamentarians to bring down his government in a no-confidence vote, paving the way for an election in which the people can express their will.”
It’s an extraordinary thing that a pillar of the establishment and of global capitalism is calling for the toppling of a government.
More demonstrations are expected over the weekend in London, organisers are promising even bigger turnouts than for the anti-Brexit protests with UK subjects called to the streets to “defend democracy.”
Downing Street is also facing three legal challenges in Scotland, Belfast and London. In the Scottish capital, Edinburgh a court heard that the Prime Minister’s decision to suspend or “prorogue” parliament is an unlawful abuse of power. Because the formal procedure is that the Prime Minister, must ask the Queen to order the suspension, this will be the first time in UK legal history that the Queen’s decision has been challenged in court.
At the same time the opposition Labour party led by Jeremy Corbyn says he will “politically stop” the prorogation with legislation, though he doesn’t have much time to do it. The leaders of all the opposition parties have written to the prime minister demanding that he either reverse his decision to suspend parliament or put it to a vote in the House of Commons. In a joint statement, they condemned Boris Johnson’s “undemocratic” move.
Parliament is due to resume on Tuesday when Corbyn has said it will “legislate rapidly” to prevent the government from suspending parliament calling it “a smash-and-grab raid against our democracy”.
There has been a number of high-profile resignations within the ruling Conservative Party that indicate mutiny against both no-deal Brexit and the “affront to democracy” as the Financial Times described the prorogation.
Meanwhile, the European diplomat Michel Barnier, who led negotiations with the previous UK administration of Theresa May for two years to come up with what the EU says is the best deal possible, tweeted: “PM Boris Johnson has said that the UK will leave the EU on 31 Oct. In all circumstances, the EU will continue to protect the interests of its citizens and companies, as well as the conditions for peace and stability on the island of Ireland. It is our duty and our responsibility.”
The next week in politics here are likely to be tumultuous and unprecedented with the very unity of the United Kingdom at stake, people are confused and worried. On social media one commentator quipped that he had already stockpiled goods for no-deal Brexit and now he’s got to stockpile for civil conflict.
Doctors have warned that no-deal Brexit is likely to impact supplies of the flu vaccine, risking the health of hundreds of thousands of people.
Some commentators are even calling PM Johnson’s challenge to parliament a coup. For those of us who’ve lived through an actual coup, that’s clearly an exaggeration but gives a sense of the fevered political body. There won’t be tanks on the street, generals in the House of Commons, nor human rights activists, demonstrators and journalists imprisoned. But it’s clear seismic changes are afoot in the political landscape though whether any of them will really empower people is another question.
I found myself thinking back to my own political education, growing up in the UK, studying to take a Politics and Government A-level in 1984, and having been raised in an activist Philippine family. Back then the way I was taught, the institutions of government and the workings of the UK constitution worked the way they were supposed to. I aced my exams (to the shock of my teachers who had pretty much given up on me) because I lucked out with a question on trade unions which I was personally fascinated by. Now, everything has changed.