The Spectator

Full text: Jeremy Corbyn’s conference speech

This is an extraordinary and precarious moment in our country’s history.

The Prime Minister has been found to have acted illegally when he tried to shut down parliament.The highest court in the land has found that Boris Johnson broke the law when he tried to shut down democratic accountability at a crucial moment for our public life.

The Prime Minister acted illegally when he tried to shut down opposition to his reckless and disastrous plan to crash out of the European Union without a deal. But he has failed. He will never shut down our democracy or silence the voices of the people.

The democracy that Boris Johnson describes as a “rigmarole” will not be stifled and the people will have their say.

Tomorrow parliament will return. The government will be held to account for what it has done. Boris Johnson has been found to have misled the country. This unelected Prime minister should now resign.

That would make him the shortest serving British Prime Minister in history and rightly so. His is a born-to-rule government of the entitled who believe that the rules they set for everyone else don’t apply to them.

That’s what today’s Supreme Court judgement spells out with brutal clarity. There was no reason – “let alone a good reason”, the judges concluded, for the Prime Minister to have shut down parliament. Conference, he thought he could do whatever he liked just as he always does. He thinks he’s above us all. He is part of an elite that disdains democracy. He is not fit to be prime minister. Let me quote the Supreme Court’s conclusion: “Unlawful, null and of no effect and should be quashed” – they’ve got the prime minister down to a tee.

This crisis can only be settled with a general election. That election needs to take place as soon as this government’s threat of a disastrous No Deal is taken off the table.

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