What was fair about Gina Miller’s anti-brexit fight?
The last time I saw Gina Miller, she was outside the Supreme Court, surrounded by Remaniacs chanting her name. It was September 2019 and Baroness Hale, of spider brooch fame, had just ruled that Boris Johnson’s decision to suspend Parliament for five weeks was unlawful and of no effect.
As president of the UK Supreme Court, she was delivering a unanimous judgment in the case known as Miller 2. It followed Miller 1, the 2017 case brought by the Guyanese-british businesswoman about triggering Brexit. Back then she was a big, anti-brexit cheese; the French brie to Jacob Rees-mogg’s Somerset cheddar. But there was something distinctly run-of-the-miller about the Westminster launch of her new party on Thursday, just a stone’s throw from where she almost succeeded in reversing the referendum.
Only 13 people turned up, around half of whom appeared to be staff working on the new True and Fair Party, which will campaign for constitutional reform and propriety in public life.
I’m all for both of those things, but isn’t it rather hypocritical for someone who tried to overturn a “once in a lifetime” democratic mandate to now be lobbying for reform?
“True and Fair” later released a statement that said supporters had been prevented from attending by Covid safety measures and claimed “hundreds of people were bitterly disappointed not to be able to attend in person”.
I think “bitterly” might be slightly overstating it, if we’re really being true and, indeed, fair.