How Britain Plunged Into Its Worst Constitutional Crisis in 400 Years
Boris Johnson’s efforts to ram through a no-deal Brexit have unleashed a massive fight over who holds political power in the U.K.
The news hit like a shockwave across British politics. On Wednesday morning, three of Scotland’s most senior judges found that the government had unlawfully suspended its own Parliament in a desperate attempt to force through an extreme version of Brexit.
It was, without hyperbole, the most shocking legal decision in the modern history of British public law. The logical conclusion of the ruling was that Prime Minister Boris Johnson had lied to the public, lied to Parliament, and, most shocking of all, lied to the queen.
It looks like a frenzied political battle over Brexit. But the beating heart of this story is not Brexit. It is the question of where power resides in British politics.
The U.K.’s constitutional system hands sovereignty — supreme authority — to Parliament. That power is derived from the people. The public votes for who they want to represent them, and those people sit in Parliament as MPs. The government, composed of the prime minister in Downing Street and his ministers, ultimately answers to them. The MPs can vote for or…
