THERESA May famously tried pulling off a “red, white and blue Brexit”. She failed, not least because no one knew what on earth she meant.
Boris Johnson is now trying a Bullingdon Brexit - braying and swaggering and expecting everyone else to defer to him.
He too is failing, but this time it’s because everyone knows exactly what he’s up to. His insulting, heavy-handed approach has been a disaster.
The original sin was proroguing parliament for five weeks, the longest suspension outside an election period since 1931, on the laughable grounds it was nothing to do with stifling debate on Brexit.
READ MORE: The House of cards begins to collapse
It infuriated and united a fractious opposition who refused to give him an election in mid-October and then passed a law to prevent no-deal on October 31.
Now that fateful prorogation has taken Mr Johnson’s agonies to a whole new level.
Last week, the High Court in London and a single judge at the Court of Session in Edinburgh both rejected legal challenges to the move from campaigners and politicians.
However the Scottish decision was instantly appealed to the Inner House of the Court of Session, where three judges yesterday ruled that Mr Johnson’s action had been unlawful.
The clear inference was that the PM had lied to the Queen, the parliament and the country when he claimed prorogation was merely teeing up a new legislative programme.
It doesn’t get much more serious than dragging the monarch into a national fraud.
As former Attorney General Dominic Grieve said, if that “shameful act” is established, it will be a resignation matter.
Without the palace’s trust, the PM’s position is untenable.
All eyes are now on the UK Supreme Court, where nine justices will start a three-day hearing on Tuesday.
If they agree with the Scottish judges, it’s game over. But even if they don’t, perhaps on the grounds that this is a political not a legal issue, Mr Johnson isn’t out of the woods.
The information that comes out in court could still be lethal.
It might, perhaps, include the social media messages of Dominic Cummings and other No10 aides about how they viewed the prorogation.
Parliament voted on Monday for those messages to be released by 11pm last night.
As I write, Number 10 is still refusing to do so. But the court could compel disclosure.
If anything damaging then emerged, it would lead to accusations of a cover-up.
And cover-ups, as every anorak knows, are often what do for politicians in the end.
READ MORE: Damning indictment of PM who is ripping up rule book
All this in the run up to the Conservative conference starting on September 29.
If Mr Johnson were to quit in disgrace and leave an already chaotic Tory party leaderless, the opposition could well try to capitalise on the meltdown by forcing an election.
Indeed, it might well be Jeremy Corbyn’s best shot.
The record for having the shortest premiership in British political history currently belongs to George Canning, who managed 119 days before dying in office in 1827.
If the Supreme Court agrees with the Scots judges, or enough dirt emerges, Mr Johnson will snatch the title.
The Prime Minister has said he would rather die in a ditch than fail to deliver Brexit.
His body may survive this crisis, but his reputation is teetering on the ditch’s edge.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel