Boris vows to recall parliament if Supreme Court rules suspension unlawful

PM says he’ll recall parliament if the Supreme Court upholds appeal court ruling that his prorogation of parliament is unlawful.

Boris Johnson brushes up on his Year Six history at London’s Pimlico Primary School on Wednesday. Picture: Getty Images

Boris Johnson says he will recall parliament if the Supreme Court upholds Wednesday’s appeal court ruling that his prorogation of parliament is unlawful.

Britain’s constitutional crisis, sparked by the five week suspension, will come to a head with next Tuesday’s ruling, after opposing rulings from judges in Scotland and England.

The Court of Session in Scotland ruled the prorogation - the longest since World War Two - was invalid because it was “motivated by the improper purpose of stymieing parliament” in an excoriating judgment that effectiv­ely accused the British Prime Minister of misleading the Queen to make her act unlawfully.

The decision appeared to uphold the claim from opposition MPs who alleged that it was a ruse to stop them preventing the government leaving the EU without a deal on October 31.

A group of 78 largely Remain-supporting MPs brought a case in the Scottish courts claiming that the prorogation was unlawful, alongside similar cases in England and Northern Ireland.

After the High Court in London­ rejected a similar case, the stage is now set for a showdown in the Supreme Court next Tuesday.

The Scottish court said it would make an order “declaring that the Prime Minister’s advice to HM the Queen and the prorogation which followed thereon was unlawful and is thus null and of no effect”.

Opposition MPs demanded that they be allowed to return to Westminster immediately. However, lawyers said parliament’s shutdown was likely to continue pending next week’s hearing, when the Supreme Court will face the unusual position of having to deal with two opposing rulings from senior judges in two jurisdictions of the UK.

Legal experts were adamant that the divergence had nothing to do with the subtle differences between the law and legal systems in Scotland and England and Wales, saying that two panels of senior judges on either side of the border had come to opposite views.

As well as being an embarrassment for the Prime Minister, the ruling further drags the judiciary into the political battlefield. Downing Street could use the judgment to fuel a “people versus the elites” campaign in a general election during which it hopes to pitch itself on the side of ordinary people against an out-of-touch Establishmen­t.

A No 10 source told The Sun newspaper that “the legal activists choose the Scottish courts for a reason”, provoking a backlash from other Conservatives who warned against politicising the judiciar­y.

A full ruling in the English case was due late on Wednesday, local time, but judges there appear to have accepted the government’s argument that the decision to prorogu­e was a political one over which courts did not have jurisdiction. However, in a unanimous ruling, the three Scottish judges decided that they could they rule on the issue.

In a court summary of the judgment, due in full on Friday, the Lord President, Lord Carloway, decide­d that although the Prime Minister’s advice to the Queen would not normally be subject to judicial review, “it would nevertheless be unlawful if its purpose was to stymie parliamentary scrutiny of the executive, which was a central pillar of good governance principle enshrined in the constitution”.

He judged that “the circumstances in which the advice was proffered” and documents released by the government to the court “demonstrated that this was the true reason for the prorogation”.

Another judge, Lord Brodie, reached the conclusion that the tactic was “an egregious case of a clear failure to comply with generally accepted standards of behaviour of public bodies” and was aimed at avoiding parliamentary scrutiny. Joanna Cherry QC, the Scottish National Party MP who led the case, said the decision was “a huge victory and a vindication of our case”. “The prorogation must now be stopped,” she said.

THE TIMES