On openDemocracy this week, we’ve been covering the fallout from Boris Johnson’s decision to suspend Parliament.
Firstly, there has been much debate both among our contributors and readers whether Johnson’s actions are tantamount to a coup d'état.
ourEconomy editor Laurie argues that proroguing Parliament is undemocratic, but entirely in keeping with our broken democracy. The crisis, he points out, is a long time in the making: “The ancient institutions of the British state are well past their sell-by date.”
Writing on openDemocracy, Diane Abbott, shadow home secretary, doesn’t mince her words. “We are living through a coup against Parliament by a minority of parliamentarians, who have seized control of the Tory Party from the right,” she writes.
However, it is Trump, Abbott argues, and not Johnson, to whom power will ultimately fall under a no-deal Brexit.
Green MP Caroline Lucas likewise writes that it’s “hard not to see it as anything other than a coup” when the prime minister attempts to drive through change without parliamentary oversight or public mandate. She calls for more democracy, situating the crisis in our “Westminster-focused political system”.
Of course, the ripples of the crisis extend far beyond Westminster. The repercussions for Scotland and Northern Ireland could be of historic proportions. In Edinburgh this week, there have already been moves to legally contest Johnson’s plans, raising the ghosts of the old independent Scotland. openDemocracy UK editor Adam Ramsay argues that prorogation has lit a fuse under the #indyref2 debate.
Bypassing Parliament is one thing, but can Johnson actually pull off a no-deal Brexit? openDemocracy co-founder Anthony Barnett thinks he might have gambled too far, even the prime minister doesn’t really want No Deal.
“Johnson and Cummings seem to have fallen in love with their own audacity… It can prove fatal to base your strategy on the assumption that your opponents will not overcome their weakness,” he writes.
From my letter so far you’d be forgiven for thinking that nothing else is happening in the world this week. Not so: below we also have a report from Chile ahead of crucial climate talks in the country and the latest on the fightback against deforestation in the Amazon.
With the Hong Kong’s protest movement showing no signs of diminishing, Promise Li assesses its two blind spots – class and race. While oDR looks at the plight of ethnic Koreans in Central Asia.
