It is beginning to look like it, isn’t it? Lady Hale, wearing a huge brooch that resembled a venomous spider, delivered a near fatal dose of judicial poison in her carefully worded, logical and comprehensive take-down of Johnson’s suspension of parliament. Johnson was the big fat fly caught in a sophisticated legal web, a ready meal for the Supreme Court.
In declaring the order in Council quashed they have left no room for Johnson to just organise a new prorogation, for that too would be quashed. He has no way out. It is a strategic defeat because it has strengthened the hand of parliament and weakened the government, permanently.
So there he is, then, our prime minster. A man who is yet to win a vote in the House of Commons. A man who then tells the Commons to just buzz off and then loses the court case. A man who destroys his own parliamentary majority at a stroke by sacking 21 of his MPs in a fit of pique - and thereby creates a guerrilla army of enemies with nothing to lose. Not so smart.
A man who cannot be seen in public without getting heckled and insulted. A man who cannot make a decent speech. A man who cannot command the Commons. A man who has to watch while the Commons outlaws his Brexit strategy. No deal is illegal, and the Commons will be back in business shortly to ensure it stays that way.
So if leadership is about judgement, Boris Johnson has been found badly wanting. It is true that, thanks to Labour’s ineffable ability to snatch defeat from any given political situation, he has a decent poll lead. But polling a third of the vote is no mandate for anything, and he knows as well as anyone that the next general election will be extremely unreadable – and could easily see another hung parliament elected.
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