BOris Johnson is certainly not a genuine Tory. By its repeated violations of the law, it denies one of the foundations of conservative doctrine across the Channel, widely shared by the other parties, which lies in the deep attachment to the principle of the rule of law.
The current Prime Minister has been described as a populist by his particular relationship to reality. Without claiming to settle the debate on the definition of populism, the common point between Boris Johnson, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Polish President Andrzej Duda, Marine Le Pen or Donald Trump is above all the almost pathological relationship they have with the rule of law. Arguing from a legitimacy stemming from a people whose unity is questionable, all these personalities think they can abstract themselves from norms, including the most fundamental ones.
Boris Johnson’s work since he took office in July 2019 is edifying in terms of the principle of the rule of law, which is one of the cardinal values of British society. First influenced by the dark eminence that was the former adviser Dominic Cummings, the Prime Minister multiplied the attacks on the Constitution and international law. In 2019, the decision to prorogue Parliament in the midst of a crisis over the UK’s withdrawal agreement from the European Union (EU) was severely sanctioned by the Supreme Court.
Still in the context of Brexit, Boris Johnson’s attempt to extricate himself from the constraints of the Northern Irish protocol, in particular by tabling a bill in September 2020 on the British internal market, had led the European Commission to engage an infringement procedure which will finally be abandoned, like others. Dominic Cummings himself had to step down due to lockdown breaches during the first wave of the Covid-19 outbreak.
With his departure, some hoped that Boris Johnson would show more legal weight. We have to admit that he fell from Charybdis to Scylla. He is well helped in this by two ministers who do not hide their admiration for Margaret Thatcher, Priti Patel and Dominic Raab. The first is conspicuous by her lack of humanism and, although the daughter of Indian emigrants, is more royalist than the king in dealing with the migration issue. By concluding an agreement in early April with Rwanda to “relocate” managing the flow of illegal immigrants, while presenting it as a solution that respects their rights, the Minister of the Interior broke a record for cynicism on this tragic subject. The compliance of such devices with international law and the European Convention on Human Rights is more than debatable.
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