Johnson’s cunning plan

There is an obscure law called the Civil Contingencies Act 2004 that allows the government to override Parliament in the event of a national emergency. If U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson could engineer such an emergency, he could ignore the 'surrender bill' (as he calls it) that forces him to seek an extension rather than crash out on Oct. 31.

U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson has only been in office for 10 weeks, and he is already in potentially terminal trouble.Photograph courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Opinion

BY Gwynne Dyer

September 30, 2019

The plotting reflex is strong in the populist politicians who currently run both of the big English-speaking countries. U.S. President Trump dreams up underhanded tricks even when he has no need of them. Why would he bother to s...

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