It was the establishment on trial, and the verdict is guilty

It was the courts and Parliament that were on trial this week, at the bar of public opinion, not some recondite issues relating to that fabled beast, the British Constitution. The watching public has returned a guilty verdict.

What, in essence, happened? A rich woman used her private wealth to mobilize three High Court judges to intrude themselves upon an international treaty negotiation being conducted by Her Majesty’s Government under the customary Royal Prerogative, mandated by 17.4 million British electors. It seemed fitting to the opponents of Brexit that four individuals should enjoy the right to frustrate the clearly expressed wishes of those 17.4 million voters.

Then the Government appealed, bringing 11 Supreme Court judges into play. This enlarged the number of Brexit decision makers to a total of 15 individuals, dangerously close to mob rule in the establishment mindset, but still preferable to dictation by 17.4 million stupid plebs.

Meanwhile, the moat cleansers and duck-house proprietors at Westminster staged a vote on invoking Article 50 – the right supposedly denied to them that the Remain-supporting litigants were fighting to secure for MPs. Our legislators will know early in 2017 whether the Supreme Court will award them the right to hold the vote they actually held on Wednesday.

It was disingenuous of the Remain litigants to pretend to come to the rescue of a gagged House of Commons. That House can bring down any government at any time by means of a vote of No Confidence. It can vote on anything if a majority of members wish to do so. In an attempt to put some flesh on the skeletal case, there were suggestions the Court might insist Parliament pass legislation.

So, have we got this right? The courts are now arrogating to themselves the right to order Parliament to pass legislation of the judiciary’s choosing? That, in any case, is the last thing MPs want to do. Although a majority of them are as pro-EU and anti-British as Tony Blair, they fear the triple terrors of deselection, constituents’ revenge at the ballot box and the rough justice of the lamppost if they overtly resist Brexit.

The dogs in the street know the High Court should have recused itself collectively from this vexatious litigation and declared treaty negotiation under royal prerogative – and Brexit is all about treaties, from Rome to Lisbon – non-justiciable within its jurisdiction. Instead, activist judges chose to build their part, as they have consistently done in recent decades. As a consequence, the last diminishing shreds of respect for the judiciary have been dissipated. A mass circulation daily newspaper featured the photographs of the three judges on its front page with the headline: “Enemies of the People”.

Cue orchestrated indignation by the establishment. The elites have a knee-jerk response to any impertinent criticism of the institutions that protect their ascendancy. It is a disciplinary system honed in public schools, at high table and in the gothick grotesquerie of the Palace of Westminster. Assume a severe expression that effectively combines superior knowledge (one is an expert, defending experts), disdain for the ignorance of one’s interlocutor and a clear message that the heretical critic’s career prospects are becoming more dismal by the minute, then deliver the formal reprimand.

This is uttered in the relevant formula dictated by the object of the blasphemy. “These judges are the finest legal brains in the land…” “So you choose to ignore the established consensus of 160 per cent of scientists regarding anthropogenic global warming…” “Britain will descend to Third World status within five years unless it joins the single currency…” These solemn-faced buffoons are still indulging in this pantomime of pseudo-authority and increasingly, fearfully, wondering why it is being laughed to scorn by the public.

That public for too long accorded an undeserved deference to politicians, judges and commentators who brought this country to its knees under the pressure of mass immigration, fiscal incompetence, judicial indulgence of criminality (though not of Christian bakers) and globalist anti-patriotism. It does so no more. The public knows we are governed by pompous idiots and, more significantly, that they are idiots inimical to Britain’s interests and to the despised mass of the population. It is no longer prepared to tolerate the dictatorship of this confederacy of dunces.

The British Constitution is an oxymoron. Its being unwritten is an advantage if it is executed by men of goodwill who respect its spirit. In the hands of scoundrels it is an instrument of tyranny. In 1689, for example, such scoundrels declared that James II had “deserted the throne”, at a time when he still ruled Ireland with the exception of two towns and was actively raising an army to fight for the throne he had allegedly deserted. Expect similar creative mendacity throughout the struggle by the political class to re-impose its control over the insurgent electorate by reversing or diluting the EU referendum result.

Respect! Respect! That is the establishment demand on behalf of the “finest legal brains” of the Supreme Court. After all, that venerable court has been the pivot of justice throughout Britain’s seven-year history (“Hey, look – I mean – this is a young country,” as the Supreme Court’s first begetter told us). One of those fine brains spared an armed robber prison, instructing him instead to send flowers to his victims by way of apology.

The public no longer finds the other-worldly delusory mentality of Britain’s Gilbert and Sullivan institutions endearing. Behind a smokescreen of pedantry the reality is that the judiciary, hugely pro-EU as their CVs mostly demonstrate (otherwise the quangocrats would not have appointed them), are trying to stop Brexit. If they refrain from doing so in their judgement, which events have already rendered obsolete, it will only be because they will be deterred by the embarrassing transparency of such a ploy.

Either way, the British public is now as alienated from the judiciary as from the legislature. Patronising appeals to the ignorant public to defer to supposed “experts” fall on deaf ears. If Britain’s total emancipation from the doomed European Union is not proceeded with quickly, there will be very serious trouble. Nor is it any longer credible that the current established order can survive after the Brexit process.