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09 January 2026 / Dr Graham Zellick CBE KC FAcSS
Issue: 8144 / Categories: Features , Constitutional law , Brexit
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The prorogation that never was

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Professor Graham Zellick KC revisits Boris Johnson’s 2019 attempted prorogation of Parliament

The former royal correspondent Valentine Low’s new book Power and the Palace: The Inside Story of the Monarchy and 10 Downing Street (Headline Press, 2025) takes us back to the parliamentary turmoil surrounding Brexit and Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s attempt to get it over the line without further parliamentary obstacles by suspending Parliament for five weeks. It contains no great revelations, adds little to what we learnt from Sir Anthony Seldon and Raymond Newell’s Johnson at 10: The Inside Story (Atlantic Books, 2023), and from a legal perspective is incomplete, but it inevitably revives speculation of the role played by various actors in the shabby drama and where fault lay in a particularly unsavoury and egregious episode in recent British politics.

Johnson was fearful that Parliament (which had broken free of government control) would legislate to prevent a no-deal Brexit—a threatened outcome he was desperate to leave on the table as leverage

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