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Economist Podcasts

And the law won: Boris Johnson’s latest defeat

Economist Podcasts

The Economist

News, News & Politics

4.35K Ratings

🗓️ 25 September 2019

⏱️ 22 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Once again, Britain’s prime minister has been thwarted, this time for trying to stymie Parliament as the European departure looms. How will Boris proceed, and how will Brexit progress? We take a look at economists’ rise to policy prominence, and what they did wrong when they got there. And, a surprisingly cheery Congolese doomsday sect.

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Transcript

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0:00.0

Hello and welcome to the Intelligence on Economist Radio. I'm your host, Jason Palmer. Every weekday,

0:10.3

we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world. It used to be that there were

0:19.0

very few economists actually involved in making the world's economic policies.

0:23.6

We examine a new book that shows how they rose to prominence and how they were overconfident and underprepared when they got there.

0:31.6

And we spend time with some kambanguists in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

0:42.5

The rapidly growing religious sect has quite a preoccupation with the end of days, but its members seem to be rather cheerfully embracing it.

0:56.3

First up, though.

1:03.7

It was yet another stunning twist in the Brexit story.

1:07.5

Yesterday, an unprecedented ruling by Britain's highest court dealt a crushing blow to Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

1:11.3

The Supreme Court unanimously ruled that Mr. Johnson acted illegally when he suspended or

1:16.4

proroged Parliament for five weeks.

1:19.3

The court is bound to conclude, therefore, that the decision to advise her majesty to

1:25.3

parochate Parliament was unlawful because it had the effect of frustrating

1:31.2

or preventing the ability of parliament to carry out its constitutional functions without reasonable

1:38.4

justification. The suspension sparked enormous uproar in August.

1:43.9

MPs on all sides were pretty angry about this because they suspected that the reason he was sending them home was to avoid further scrutiny of his plans for Brexit.

1:54.7

John Pete is our Brexit editor.

1:56.6

And MPs, since Boris Johnson became Prime Minister, have been suspicious that what he wants to do is engineer a British departure from the European Union

2:05.0

without further discussion in Parliament and probably without a deal at the end of October.

2:10.3

In yesterday's judgment, the Court's President Lady Hale said Mr Johnson had frustrated Parliament at a crucial time.

2:16.6

The effect on the fundamentals of our democracy was extreme.

2:21.3

The ruling was met with cheers from members of the opposition Labour Party

...

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