Boris is about to put British voters back in charge, by Brendan O’Neill.

The news that Boris Johnson has prorogued parliament for a month has Remoaner MPs in a froth. … He is destroying parliamentary democracy, his critics cry. …

The only reasonable reply to these self-styled doughty defenders of parliamentary democracy is: who do you think you are kidding? If these people cared one jot about parliament, they wouldn’t be devoting so much political and moral energy to trying to keep the UK inside the EU, an institution whose chief accomplishment has been to water down national parliaments through the pooling of sovereignty and the removal of key political and economic questions from the grubby sphere of national democracy.

The EU supports parliamentary democracy like an electric chair supports your back. To pose as warriors for the rights of parliament in one breath and then weep and wail for the return of the UK to the anti-democratic bosom of the EU in the next speaks to a serious infantilism of the mind. …

It is wrong to prorogue parliament; this indeed represents a problematic restriction on parliamentary democracy. And it is wrong to abuse parliament, as everyone from the Speaker down has been doing for three years now, to stymie the wishes of those whose beliefs and hopes are meant to be embodied in parliament — the people. This is a clash of two evils. Which evil is worse? People can decide that for themselves.