Napoleon famously said: “Four hostile newspapers are __more to be feared than a thousand bayonets.”
I don’t think he had the Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph, Daily Express and the Sun in mind, but three senior British judges may well share Bonaparte’s opinion today.
They were castigated by the Brexit-loving newspaper quartet because of their ruling that parliament should trigger article 50 to start the UK’s resignation from the European Union and not the prime minister, Theresa May, using royal prerogative powers.
These judges are “the enemies of the people”, says the Mail. They stand accused of frustrating the will of the people, says the Telegraph. And the Express’s front-page comment indulges in hyperbole to register its disgust:
Today this country faces a crisis as grave as anything since the dark days when Churchill vowed we would fight them on the beaches.
The Sun is __more exercised by the “motley handful of EU-based campaigners” who launched the legal action. It is particularly upset about the action being “led by a foreign-born multi-millionaire”. (This is a newspaper, incidentally, published by a foreign-born multi-millionaire.)
The Telegraph, owned by multi-millionaires living outside of mainland Britain, sticks to the constitutional drama, arguing that the high court should never have treated it as “a justiciable question”.
It argues that Lord Thomas, the lord chief justice, Sir Terence Etherton, the Master of the Rolls, and Lord Justice Sales “should have dismissed the case as an abuse of the legal process”.
Oddly, the Telegraph then states: “This is a political dispute to be settled in parliament, not by judges.” Sorry? Isn’t that the very point of the ruling?
Parliament is the sovereign body and will settle it. The royal prerogative is, as its name suggests, an ancient, anachronistic, arcane political instrument that is, fundamentally, anti-democratic.
Given the lack of a written constitution, it was always the case that the referendum was advisory rather than binding. It was the will of the people to leave the EU, but the complex manner of the exit is parliament’s, not the prime minister’s, responsibility.
But the Telegraph views it as “a bad day for the British constitution”, adding: “Whatever their protestations of legalistic propriety, the courts will be perceived to be helping to frustrate Brexit.” Perceived by whom? Newspaper editors?
The Mail sees it as “a betrayal of common sense, the people and democracy.” And it puts the judges in the dock, calling them “three members of an out-of-touch clique”. (The Mail’s editor, Paul Dacre, a multi-millionaire multiple homeowner, is, of course, a member of an in-touch clique.)
In his paper’s opinion, “judges have time and again backed Europe against the interests of the British people” and, this time around, have delivered a decision based on “a blinkered reading of statutes”.
Laughably, it cites the late Lord Denning as a judge likely to have “picked a way through the dust-encrusted legal textbooks to see the wood for the trees and come down on the side of reason”. (For those who might have forgotten, it was Lord Denning who produced a report on the 1963 Profumo affair that was widely regarded as a meretricious piece of work.)
The Mail argues that “at no stage in the long campaign ... did any serious figure suggest the outcome would be merely advisory”. Who, one might ask, is a serious figure? Plenty of people made just that point, including the Financial Times’s legal commentator David Allen Green and Haroon Siddique in the Guardian.
Even if the Mail didn’t notice those, does it not remember the piece it ran 15 days before the referendum in which it quoted David Cameron’s father-in-law, Lord Astor, as saying: “The EU referendum is merely advisory; it has no legal standing to force an exit. Parliament is still sovereign.”
Let facts not spoil a good argument though. Anyway, back to those evil judges. According to the Mail, the judiciary is “infested with Europhiles” and “there is a strong risk that even supreme court judges may allow subliminal prejudice in favour of the EU to influence their decision”.
The paper is worried about “remainer MPs” and “the overwhelmingly Europhile, unelected Lords” frustrating the will of the people.
And then comes a momentous threat:
The Mail says very calmly that if the Lords defy the will of the people, then maybe the people should question whether we need such a second chamber.
Gosh. I need to sit down. The Mail being calm. That is truly frightening. By contrast, the Express is in its usual hysterical form. It is worried less by peers than MPs, especially those from north of the border.
Imagine what poison will be spread by the 54 Scottish nationalist MPs. Imagine the wholly disproportionate power that can be wielded by the eight Euro-fanatical Lib Dems.
And imagine how the four million people who voted Ukip at the general election will feel as they see their beliefs trampled in the dust.
It was somewhat surprising that the Sun seems reluctant to scream at the judges. Instead it blames Cameron because his “glib promises about the government smoothly enacting the referendum verdict have proved worthless”.
And it too falls into the trap of arguing that remainers want “to keep our parliament subservient to Brussels” while contending that parliament should not have the power to deal with the Brexit negotiations.
Politicians, it says, must ask themselves whether they will “honour the biggest ballot box mandate in British history ... or sniffily decide the little people cannot be trusted”.
So parliamentary sovereignty must be upheld ... but not always.