Boris Johnson tried to break parliament – now its members must return the favour

Editorial: The House of Commons will continue to block no-deal Brexit. And when the prorogation and Yellowhammer papers come out, there will be nowhere left for the prime minister to turn

At the height of the campaign to replace Theresa May with Boris Johnson, it was claimed that the arrival of an original Leaver, of a man with a sense of destiny and mission, of a figure enjoying a new, fresh mandate from his people (albeit a little under 100,000 Conservative Party members who voted for him), and above all such an energetic statesman, would be transformative.

It would change the dynamics of Brexit. Unlike Ms May, Mr Johnson was expected, as he had promised, to threaten to walk away from the talks with the EU unless he got the Irish backstop, and much else, excised from the UK-EU withdrawal agreement concluded by his predecessor. He would, unlike her, mean business, and leave the EU on 31 October, “do or die”. Mr Johnson promised that Britain would leave the EU with a deal at the end of October if the country has the “will” and the “drive” for Brexit. He promised a “backstopectomy”, and observed that if it was possible to get to the moon and back 50 years ago, then the problem of frictionless trade on the Irish border could be solved. He wanted the nation to rediscover its “sense of mission”.

Maybe, but Mr Johnson seems to be having some trouble with his own sense of mission. The more he and his Svengali-like adviser Dominic Cummings attempt to “take a chainsaw” to the constitutional niceties, the harder things seem to get for them. The Commons has put up a spirited resistance and passed a law forbidding no-deal Brexit. The speaker has pulled a fast one and ensured that this parliament will be selecting his successor, and probably not one to Mr Johnson’s taste. Mr Johnson cannot have his early election. In removing the party whip from the rebels, he has created a guerrilla army on his backbenches with nothing to lose, and destroyed his tiny working majority. He has lambasted the EU and failed to send any proposals to them for a new deal, to the acute embarrassment of all concerned.

Now a Scottish court – that detail must hurt a bit – has told the self-styled minister for the union (Mr Johnson) that his advice to the Queen to prorogue parliament was unlawful. Though they did not say as much, the Court of Session judges clearly concluded that the prime minister may have misled her majesty, or at least been economical with the truth about his motivations. Having been around for a while, and aware of Mr Johnson’s record and reputation, the Queen may not have taken him entirely at his word. She has, after all, been advised during her 67-year reign by the likes of Anthony Eden, Harold Wilson and Tony Blair, men who were also at home with subterfuge and spin, and witnessed at close quarters some stranger-than-fiction political scandals. Yet she had no option but to sign off on Mr Johnson’s suspension of parliament, whatever her private reservations might have been.

One thing we may be confident about is that the palace does not wish to be dragged into this toxic political swampland, and will be furious that this is exactly what has happened. It would not have done if Mr Johnson had stuck to the usual prorogation script, and ordered a brief suspension of parliament post-Brexit (assuming it was to happen). It is his own fault.

The net effect of all of this is to prove, once again, that electing a new Conservative leader in July made no impact whatsoever on the fundamentals of the Brexit crisis. The country remains bitterly divided. The House of Commons will continue to block no-deal Brexit. The EU is still waiting for constructive practical ideas to solve the Irish backstop, which is, after all, proving more difficult than the Apollo project (for the simple reason that while it was logically possible to get a man on the moon, it is not logically possible for the UK to be simultaneously inside and outside a customs union). Threatening no-deal Brexit did not do the trick, packing the government with the ERG and hardline Brexiteers has only replaced one set of rebels with another. The Tory party is more divided than ever. The “Boris bounce” in the opinion polls and opening up a lead over Labour is the only concrete achievement of Mr Johnson’s time in office.

The irony is that the prorogation of parliament was designed to make it impossible for the Commons to pass any legislation making no-deal Brexit illegal. Yet the plan failed to do so, and merely emboldened MPs to take matters into their own hands, seize control of the order paper, and take back control of Brexit themselves. In that sense, the court cases in Edinburgh and London have been overtaken by events. Yet it is still not a good look for the prime minister to be caught out for breaking the law and misleading the sovereign like this, and, as we will soon see, for the papers on prorogation and Operation Yellowhammer to be forcibly published.

The judgment also means that parliament may, if the Supreme Court so rules, have the opportunity to meet earlier than was scheduled, and to foreshorten or even cancel the party conferences recess, such is the gravity of the crisis. The Commons should do so; the government, now more than ever, needs to be held accountable, not least for its abuse of power and attempt to stymie and silence parliament.