The PM either ignores or rewrites the rules meant to hold him in check. He was thwarted this week, but the danger persists
How many more times does it need to happen? How much more proof do we need that the country is run by a man with contempt for the rule of law, who believes that he and his friends are beyond its reach?
Boris Johnson demonstrated that again to the nation this week, as vividly as he could. Faced with the prospect that Owen Paterson, a comrade from the Brexit trenches of 2016, would be punished for what parliament’s standards committee called “an egregious case of paid advocacy”, Johnson instructed MPs to let his chum off the hook. The prime minister’s orders, dutifully followed by 250 of his troops, were to halt Paterson’s 30-day suspension from the House of Commons and to scrap the system that had found him guilty, replacing it with one that would be gentler in its treatment of Conservatives – because Conservatives would design it and dominate it.
Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist
