Ross Clark

In an astonishing interview on the Today programme this morning, Liberal Democrat leader Jo Swinson tried to explain why she was tabling an amendment which would force a referendum on any deal the government presents to the House of Commons on the grounds that we should 'let the people decide'. She then asserted that the country had changed its mind since the 2016 referendum and now wanted to remain. It had to be pointed out to her that her party has, in fact, just adopted a policy of reversing Article 50 without a referendum – so much for letting the people decide. The truth is that like so many Remain campaigners, Swinson will banter on about letting the people have a say when it suits her while knowing it would be fatal to her cause to have another referendum at the moment.

Just when you thought that the Tories were getting into a position where they might be capable of winning the formerly Labour-leaning seats in the Midlands and the North – which they will need to snatch in order to survive after next election – along comes a minister to chuck a spanner in the electoral works.  Housing minister Robert Jenrick has suggested that the government might be minded to cut or even abolish inheritance tax, complaining about its ‘fundamental unfairness’ and claiming that it amounted to ‘paying tax twice’. Disturbingly, Sajid Javid also made a hint about cutting inheritance tax at Tory conference, suggesting that it might be emerging party policy.

Why do so many people try to compare Boris Johnson with Donald Trump? There is a US president whose manner and approach our Prime Minister resembles, but it isn’t Trump – it is Bill Clinton. It is hard to think of anyone else who has honed to a fine art the ability to survive narrow scrapes with native charm. Just look at the reaction to the allegation that Boris groped a young female journalist, Charlotte Edwardes, beneath The Spectator’s dining table two decades ago    Yes, Donald Trump survived groping allegations too, but not without stirring up a hornets’ nest of outrage, culminating in a mass protest following his inauguration. Trump survives by escalating outrage against him, thus uniting his enemies’ enemies behind him.

How fortunate that electric vehicle technology has moved on to the extent that transport secretary Grant Shapps is able to announce he in looking at bringing forward to date on which petrol and diesel cars will be banned from 2040 to 2035. Or maybe not. On closer examination, it isn’t battery technology which has advanced – only the political pressure for being seen to act on climate change. It is possible, of course, that some as-yet unknown technology will arrive to make it feasible to ban all petrol and diesel vehicles from 2035. But we are no nearer discovering it yet. Without it, the government is heading for a very big policy failure. I wrote here about electric cars in August 2017, just after the then environment secretary Michael Gove had announced the 2040 date.

Amid Labour’s jubilation over the Supreme Court decision yesterday it would have been easy to miss Jeremy Corbyn’s latest attack on the market economy. But it shouldn’t go unremarked because what Corbyn proposed would seriously damage the pharmaceuticals industry – either meaning that taxpayers would have to bear the enormous costs of developing drugs, or would mean fewer drugs being developed at all. Corbyn cited the case of nine year old cystic fibrosis sufferer Luis Walker, who is being denied the medicine, Orkambi, because the drugs manufacturer is refusing to sell it to the NHS at an affordable cost.

In one respect Gina Miller is right. Today’s Supreme Court decision is bigger than Brexit. We are now in a civil war without bullets – between two sides who both claim to be fighting for democracy but who have very different ideas of what it entails. In the one corner are those who believe that democracy is where the electorate vote for something in a plebiscite and then government carries out its instructions; in the other corner are those who believe that democracy is Parliament and the courts acting together in what they see as the best interests of the people. As I have written here before, the correct term for what the latter group advocate, and what was demonstrated in the show of power by the Supreme Court this morning is Kritarchy, rule by judges.

Another week, another step along the road to Britain’s transformation into a kritarchy – rule by judges. Last week, the Court of Session in Edinburgh and the High Court in London both ruled that Boris Johnson’s decision to prorogue Parliament for five weeks had been lawful. But if you thought it was all over you haven’t read Bleak House. Just as Dickens’s fictional family, the Jarndyces, were torn apart by an endless legal dispute, Joanna Cherry and her lawyers are going to take this to the wire. It turns out that the Court of Session has an Inner House, to which you can appeal if you don’t like its first decision. This morning, three judges reversed last week’s decision and decided that it was, after all, illegal.

According to John Bercow he has chosen to step down on 31 October because it would be the 'least disruptive and most democratic course of action' if he stayed on for the votes on the Queen’s speech expected in the last week of October. But there is a somewhat glaring reason for choosing the last day of October – it is a none-too-subtle hint that he sees it as his duty to frustrate Britain’s departure from the EU, which was due on that date but which, thanks to the law passed by Parliament today, now seems likely to be delayed again. Going for that date is Bercow’s way of saying 'job done'. Two years ago, following the 2017 general election, Bercow went back on his previous intention to step down some time in 2018.

So there goes the reputation of Boris Johnson’s henchmen as cunning operators. It has been a bad week for Dominic Cummings and others in the Downing Street bunker who were widely assumed to have gamed every possibility and to have some genius strategy for delivering Brexit by 31 October, in spite of the assembled forces of Remain who are determined to stop them. Clearly, not everything has gone to plan. The Remainers have enjoyed their Battle of Marston Moor. It is Parliamentarians 1, Cavaliers 0. On Monday, a bill seeking to prevent a no-deal Brexit on 31 October will become law – and Boris has been denied his fallback: a general election. But not so fast.

Was there ever such a principled stand over a such a feeble cause? If today’s Tory rebels were intent on overturning the 2016 referendum result because, in all their conscience, they could support a policy of leaving the EU, I would not agree with what they were doing, but I would have some grudging respect for it. Instead, what is the great issue at stake in today’s vote? Another extension of Article 50 to 31 January. Yep, another three whole months in the EU. But to what purpose? The rebels can’t come up with a more specific demand because they do not know or cannot agree on what they want. Some want to remain, others think we should leave but do not know how.