09 January 2026
Boris Johnson’s 2019 attempt to shut down Parliament remains a constitutional cautionary tale. The move, framed as a routine exercise of the royal prerogative, was in truth an extraordinary effort to sideline Parliament at the height of the Brexit crisis. Writing in NLJ this week, Professor Graham Zellick KC dissects how prorogation was wrongly assumed to be beyond judicial scrutiny, only for the Supreme Court to intervene unanimously
The court’s judgment reframed prorogation as a justiciable power where its effect undermines parliamentary democracy. Zellick argues that the real offence was not embarrassment to the monarch but an abuse of executive authority aimed squarely at Parliament itself.
While he praises the clarity of the ruling, he warns against celebrating the Supreme Court as a constitutional court. The case, he concludes, reaffirmed a core principle: executive convenience can never trump constitutional fundamentals.
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