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The Brexit establishment is now comforting itself that Boris Johnson can run a populist general election campaign on the basis of the “People versus Parliament” – or the “People Versus

Judges”. It is perfectly true that elected parliamentarians, MEPs like Nigel Farage as much as Commons MPs, are not popular. But Boris Johnson is a charter member of the MP class, who

believe that the rules others abide by do not apply to them. The recent revelations, about taxpayer’s moneys paid from his budget as Mayor of London to a lady friend, will do nothing to help

him in his campaign to become the people’s champion against the kindly grandmotherly figure of Barbara Hale, the chair of the Supreme Court. Some figures are worth bearing in mind. Of the

52 million voting age taxpayers in June 2016, some 11.4 million voted to “leave” the European Union without anyone defining what “Leave” meant. Indeed, tenors of the Brexit campaign,

including Boris Johnson, assured voters that voting Leave would not affect access to the single market or threaten foreign investment in the UK, such as the Japanese automobile firms who

have made clear, via the unusually outspoken Japanese ambassador in London, that cut off from EU single market sales and inward arriving components make it unlikely Japanese car firms will

stay in the UK. Of course, rules of democracy are clear, and no one disputes the Brexit camp won. But it would be wrong to assume that the other 34.6 million voters in the UK are all ardent

hard Brexit supporters. The famous _Daily Mail_ 2016 front page “Enemies of the People”, with its echoes of 1930s attacks on enemies of the people in the Nazi and Soviet press, found no

support. In the parliamentary elections in 2017, the municipal elections of 2018, and the European elections of 2019 voters turned away from hard Tory Brexiters and Labour’s unedifying

fence-sitting and opted for Lib Dems, greens, Scottish and Welsh nationalists, who all said they wanted a softer Brexit, or a new vote of the people to solve the dilemma. The Supreme Court

has in effect concluded that the prime minister lied to the Queen. It is one thing to run a campaign against Gina Miller or the odd judge, but quite another to defend a prime minister who

was less than truthful in forcing the Queen to concede his demand for a wholly partisan decision forced on Her Majesty, simply for the political advantage of Boris Johnson and Dominic

Cummings. We are in uncharted constitutional territory. There is the democratic decision of the people in the 2016 plebiscite. But there is equally the tradition of the supremacy of

representative parliamentary democracy. We don’t – yet – have that clarity in UK constitutional arrangements. In other democracies that tension is resolved by a written constitution which

defines clearly what the rules of holding a referendum should be and how effect should be given by parliament to a referendum decision. Right now it is unlikely that two-thirds of MPs will

want to give the prime minister an instant general election. So the idea that it can be fought on the basis of this supreme court judgement is moot. Some tabloids might be willing to go with

a populist campaign, but most people realise that press proprietors, some living abroad and not paying taxes in the UK, are themselves an establishment which millions of voters may not be

inclined to support. Jeremy Corbyn, after the three day train crash of the failed Watson putsch and then the stitch up of Labour’s Brexit debate, can hardly believe his luck. Boris Johnson

sounded weak and waffly as he tried to respond to the Supreme Court judgement. Like a boy who has been caught stealing from the school tuck-shop till he still won’t admit he has done

anything wrong. Parliament will come back and the prime minister who has dodged most questions since July either from broadcasters or MPs will now have to face MPs from his own party as well

as opposition parties. If he can survive the next few days, he still has to find a majority for any Brexit deal or risk the crisis of a full shutdown of the economy with a no-deal crash

out. Thereafter, does he rush to a general election based on making Barbara Hale, and indirectly the Queen, the target for populist hate? If he tries, it won’t work.