Boris Johnson may relish the street protests, but here’s why they must go on

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/sep/02/boris-johnson-street-protests-democracy-defended

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The protest that took place last Wednesday evening, on the day the prime minister prorogued parliament, was part-organised by Another Europe is Possible. I was on the conference-call planning it, and we argued about whether or not “coup” was the right word, whether to start at 5pm or 6pm, whether to protest daily or concentrate on the Saturday. We talked about demo-fatigue and sound systems, the far right – who, inexplicably, were marched by police straight through the #StopTheCoup march at the weekend – but nobody argued about whether or not we should be protesting.

The debate on our current crisis has concentrated on proroguing, but it is no more than the instrument of what has occurred: the executive has moved against the parliament. Not tricked it, outwitted it, bullied it, or won it round – moved explicitly against it. You cannot find precedent for this in the debates surrounding the Falklands war, or the national government of 1931; you’re squarely on the territory of the English civil war. To watch it happen and accede to it with silence would be unpatriotic, an act of bad citizenship.

Political philosophy made the point decades ago that authoritarians love disorder

Nevertheless, demonstrating leaves an uncomfortable sense of playing into the prime minister’s hands – or more precisely, into those of Dominic Cummings (Johnson being hardly renowned for his over-arching game plan). Political philosophy made the point decades ago that authoritarians love disorder. It creates the spectacle of an unruly mob that legitimises acts of state violence. That could be symbolic – the development of a parallel narrative, in which pro-democracy protesters are seen as the lawbreakers for holding up traffic, exceeding the lawlessness of a government that overturns the rule of law. Or it could be a literal horse charge. Either way, the act of protesting opens up those possibilities. A completely supine population is difficult to characterise one way or the other – hard to demonise, impossible to kettle.

Specifically, the rallying cries suit Johnson’s argument so well he could have written them himself. I have no problem with the word “coup”. It has been charged with overstatement: it plainly is not. That it is a fancy foreign word, such as you might expect from the metropolitan elite, I wouldn’t think twice about; the relentless degradation of discourse – you’re arguing, you’re losing, experts are for losers – is part of the problem we’re facing, and I will not submit to its principles. The main issue with “coup” is that no hashtag spells it the same way twice.

But “no to no deal” is a vexing double negative, since it leads inexorably to the idea that you’d say “yes to a deal”. It is highly likely that this was the government’s intention all along – that no deal improved their leverage all right, not with the EU but with British MPs. If they could amp up the perils, they could ultimately turn any objection to any new deal into an act of national sabotage. That’s the point of the £100m advertising campaign, which is deliberately low on detail and intentionally terrifying. I wouldn’t be surprised if they’d leaked the Operation Yellowhammer no-deal planning document themselves, the vindictive dismissal of Sajid Javid’s aide afterwards just an act of theatre. The only signal that this isn’t the strategy is that Johnson doesn’t seem to have the ghost of a plan for a deal.

“Defend democracy”, meanwhile, allies demonstrators with MPs, in readiness for the “people versus parliament” election that is Johnson’s chosen and safest territory. By the logic of his position – that the will of the people has been continually thwarted by the elites in Westminster – any defence of the rights of parliament becomes an argument in favour of those elites. Protesters are simultaneously a lawless rabble and the voice of the establishment. Having destroyed the Conservatives as a conservative party – pro-business, commonsense incrementalists – and now probably lost Scottish Tories, Johnson’s only real prospect of power is as the leader of an English nationalist party. Ethno-nationalism sucks its rhetorical purpose from a hatred of the establishment, without which it’s all bigotry and bunting.

Fresh anti-prorogation protests planned in 30 cities and towns

This is very different territory to the protests against the Iraq war, for instance, where there had been no build-up of assertions beforehand about who the real, authentic people of Britain were, and whether or not they wanted to go to war. We have now had three years of wrangling: bold-faced assertions that 52% is an “overwhelming” majority; that they all want the same thing, the most extreme version of that thing; and that members of that majority are the authentic voices of Britain, and their opponents, by extension, are just phoney, moneyed, unserious defenders of the status quo.

It is a bind, and an inevitable one: the principles of democracy, that it is discursive, collaborative, pluralistic, have been under such sustained attack that any act of defending it can be portrayed as its opposite.

And yet, inconveniently, no deal must be resisted, as it will cause, at the very least, hardship and hunger. Democracy must be protected, as the alternative is, at best, even for the most insulated, nihilism. Freedom of movement and the rights of EU citizens have to be fought for just for the simple expedient of being able to look your friends and neighbours in the face.

The fundamental question of protest is not, “What does it achieve?”, as if there should be key performance indicators. Rather, “Who are you if you do nothing? What solidarity are you not showing? What presumption of citizenly inertia are you building in to the metric?” The calendar of events for this week, across the country, is at stopthecoup.org.uk. Coup has no “e”.