Place Your LiliBets: Will the Queen Fire Boris Johnson?
She's got her stick, and she's ready for one final stunt
Oi, barristers! I’ve got a hot legal tip via English law and policy expert David Allen Green’s Law and Policy Blog: Lilibet Sr. is the only person with constitutional power to sack Boris Johnson if he refuses to resign at the end of his ongoing big fucken crisis.
There are a few options for ousting the party boy Prime Minister without the Queen, but they’re toughies.
Johnson could undergo a parliamentary vote of no confidence (rather than a party vote of no confidence, which he underwent in June and survived, and legally cannot go through again for a year). If that were to occur it may risk “Johnson seeking a general election (which a Prime Minister can ask the Queen for, now that the Fixed-term Parliaments Act is repealed.)”
“But other than that, and tutting loudly, there is little that the parliamentary party can do directly to remove an unwanted Prime Minister,” wrote Green.
But wait! There’s another, more labyrinthine route apparently, too.
“Indirectly, however, [Parliament] can elect a new leader – and hope (and expect) that new leader to be invited by the Queen to form a government. For it is only the monarch, in our system, who has the direct power to hire and fire a Prime Minister,” he elaborated.
Now there’s an idea….
“She would have to sack Boris Johnson, because she is the only one who can. Of course, this is not what anyone would want, especially in her jubilee year and with her ill health. But the constitution of the United Kingdom would offer no other choice,” Green said.
Uh huh. The Queen wouldn’t want to get involved in such horrid affairs. She’d much rather be with her horses and teapots, minding her own apolitical business. It would be a dreadful imposition indeed to be forced to pick up the phone and deliver to ol’ Boris those two magic words: “Sod off!”
But she could.
For his part, it seems Boris is more likely to batten down the hatches below his office chair at 10 Downing Street (girded by his model bus collection for protection) than resign.
So perhaps it wouldn’t be such a bad idea for Lyin’ Down Liz to throw a little monarchical heft around one final time so the world remembers who’s really the boss over there.
Bye, bye Boris.
