Graphic by Jieyu Feng ’22
BY SOPHIE SOLOWAY ’23
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson moved to prorogue the Parliamentary session for five weeks on Sept. 9. In the face of mounting pressures from all sides of English politics to finalize action within the European Union (EU), Johnson has suspended Parliament from meeting until three weeks before the highly awaited Brexit plan is meant to be released. This prorogation’s length and timing is highly irregular for British politics.
This scene was further dramatized by the rare involvement of Black Rod, a political figure who acts on behalf of the Queen to organize and establish traditional happenings. On the day that Parliament met to discuss and vote on the proposed suspension, Sarah Clarke, the current Black Rod, led the Speaker of the House to leave the Parliamentary discussion and therefore begin the prorogation.
In May, former Prime Minister Theresa May announced that she would resign from her post after years of failed Brexit negotiations. In the month that followed, 10 Parliament members were nominated to fill her post. Boris Johnson ran his campaign on the basis of a firm departure from the EU by the end of October and continued his career-long support of the Vote Leave campaign. These sweeping proclamations won him the party-wide election in June, but have recently turned members of his party off his leadership. Now, just three months later, Johnson has lost much of his support and has turned to drastic measures to achieve Brexit
Given all of this, the prorogation seems an apt conclusion to a chaotic summer for the EU. This action from Johnson has furthered the sense of urgency in current British politics. As the Oct. 31 deadline approaches, the notion of accepting a no-deal Brexit — a move in which no negotiations are completed and England simply removes itself from the EU overnight — is an increasingly looming threat with unpredictable global effects.
For Mount Holyoke Professor of International Relations and Politics Christopher Mitchell, these few months have held one troublingly startling event.
“The most shocking event to me was the decision by Johnson to prorogue parliament,” he said. “It was a major break from the norms of British politics, and signaled that Johnson was willing to radically reshape British politics to get Brexit by Oct. 31.”
One of the most prominent arguments that developed support for Brexit was rooted in worries about the rising influx of immigrants and the way in which the EU handled the growing refugee crisis.
According to the Washington Post, “When the British voted to break away from the European Union [...] they said they wanted to ‘take back control’ of their money and laws and they expressed a deep anxiety over immigration.”
The events occurring in the United Kingdom, starting well before the Brexit referendum vote in June 2016, have been unequivocally linked to a rise in the rates of hate crimes.
According to the BBC, “Figures show hate crimes in England and Wales rising over the past five years.” Local agencies have reported an average of almost 400 more prejudice-based crimes within the three years since the Brexit referendum.
These spikes have highlighted some similarities with the U.S., namely rising rates of hate crimes and flagrant demonstrations of racism and xenophobia. The timely parallels between the two countries’ crises have led some to compare the newly elected British Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, and President Trump. But Professor Mitchell questions the ways in which Brexit onlookers think of these two leaders.
“There are certainly similarities between the two men,” Mitchell said. “It’s easy to identify commonalities in the forces which brought them to power, especially an anti-immigrant sentiment and a sense that national sovereignty has been eroded by international integration… At the same time, it’s a mistake to simply characterize Johnson as ‘the British Trump.’ Johnson has cultivated an image as an outsider, but is very much a member of the political elite. Donald Trump, for all his money, is much more of a genuine political outsider.”
There is much at stake as the deadline for a Brexit deal looms.