Supreme court justice Lord Kerr has condemned the government’s ‘unbridled power’. Who can disagree with him?
Boris Johnson is said to be bad at making friends, but he is good at making enemies. This week he has added judges and bishops to his lengthening list. The departing and longest-serving supreme court justice, Lord Kerr, has condemned the prime minister’s persistent abuse of the judiciary as “unbridled power” and a “slippery slope to dictatorship”. This comes on top of a statement from the leaders of the UK’s Anglican churches deploring Johnson’s admission of law-breaking over Brexit as a “disastrous precedent”. Such a breach of political protocol by the church is most unusual.
There is something to be said for abrasion within the British establishment. The constitution is devoid of formal checks and the relationship of the church and the law to government should never be too comfortable. The civil service, another of Johnson’s new-found enemies, needs to be obedient. Apart from that, the media should not stand alone as sole constraint on the executive.
