If, like me, you’re an admirer of the amazing civilizational achievement that is the British constitution, then you’re probably having a bad day. Whatever you think of Brexit (and this is still basically what I think about it), the decision of the U.K.’s Supreme Court to undo Boris Johnson’s prorogation of Parliament is at the very least a colossal failure of prudence — that most British of political virtues — and another step down into the swirling maw of a governing crisis.
Outrageous as it is, as the latest embodiment of elite arrogance in Western politics, this move has to be seen in the context of a broader deformation of the British regime of which the Brexit referendum has itself also been part. The basic logic of parliamentary government is a mediative logic of representation, which moderates and guards against both popular and elitist excesses. Neither the people nor the nation’s high and mighty simply rule in such a system but both are given a share in ruling.
This has never worked perfectly in Britain, of course, or anywhere else. Edmund Burke’s argument that the Member of Parliament owed his voters judgment rather than representation wasn’t even really plausible when Burke said it. (For one thing, Burke lost the very next parliamentary election in Bristol after making that statement; his voters didn’t approve of his idea of what he owed them.) And the British system has become much more representative and democratic since his time in any case. But it has remained a parliamentary democracy, where the people’s sovereignty is said to rest with the institution of Parliament and is exercised in ways that try to make the best of both popular rule and elite governance.
That the introduction of a mechanism of direct democracy (like the referendum) into this system should be followed by the introduction of a mechanism of elite domination (like this court decision) should be no surprise. Both involve the abandonment of the middle ground made possible by representative institutions, and each such abandonment makes the next one more likely.
There is some history of referenda in British politics, especially when it comes to core questions of sovereignty and union. And there is some history of elite power grabs too of course (though it must be said that this particular one was enabled by another ill-considered constitutional innovation, the Supreme Court of the U.K., which was only created a decade ago). But this referendum and this power grab both represent willful failures of Parliament — failures to contend with both public pressure and elite pressure.
Analogies to the contemporary situation of our own (much superior but still troubled) system of government are obvious and depressing. In one Western society after another, populists and elitists are justified in blaming one another for the troubles of their politics because the institutions of mediation and accommodation that are meant to restrain both have broken down.