Hello and welcome to rock and roll politics, the podcast version with me, Steve Richards,

the first of the early autumn period, but hopefully one of many.

It's quite hard to do these days because if you put something down on tape or whatever it's called,

computer, computer, the whole political scene has changed by the time you've actually finished recording.

But anyway, let's have a go. There is so much whirling around at the moment on so many different

levels. Some, I think, quite big red herrings, some clearly of vital urgent importance. I'm afraid on one level the red herrings include the

Supreme Court case ending the prorogation of Parliament. The device of Johnson and Cummings to

paroch Parliament had already failed because it was done to prevent Parliament from introducing a law obliging Johnson

to ask for an extension rather than no deal at the EU summit. And that law had already passed.

So although it was a moment of great theatre when the judgment was read out and potentially damaging that Johnson was

found to have acted unlawfully in preroguing Parliament. It's not central to the great drama

being played out. Clearly over time, it will be one of the many momentous consequences of Brexit that a Supreme

Court has ruled as to when a government can and can't prerogue Parliament, which has other

implications about this unwritten constitution that isn't working very well at the moment.

But in terms of the fate of this government, in terms of what happens to Brexit, I think it's of limited significance or perhaps

no significance at all. And that applies to some extent also with this heated debate about the violent language being used

in political exchanges at the moment. I watched most of the debate on that first day back when

the House of Commons returned and Johnson's phrasing and juxtapositions are outrageous and without reason. They are part of a

Trump-like populism that he has decided to adopt, partly in authentically. It's partly an act

of imitation, Trump being the model, but it is partly him. He is basically a polemicist, a columnist

that provokes, who forms phrases that stand out and make waves, and that's what he is doing

as prime minister. But they aren't particularly shocking or distinctive in their outrageousness. You just have to deal with them by framing alternative arguments. So Johnson has every right. We know it's dangerous. We know it's potentially potent. To frame a debate around Parliament versus the people. You just have to find ways of exposing the weakness of the

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