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In what way can Boris Johnson possibly be compared to Joseph Goebbels? Obviously, Boris Johnson is not a Nazi in any way, shape, or form. But the astonishing thing is that Goebbels, in a quite well-known speech in 1933, said that the new German state was one in which the will of the people could be executed by the government without the interference, the unnecessary interference, of parliament. That's what made this new order, in a sense, really democratic. It's a direct expression of the popular will.
And extraordinarily, since the referendum, that is the way many have spoken, and now the prime minister himself has spoken in that way. And indeed he's acted on it. He's tried to remove parliament's involvement in the process of resolving Brexit. He has rejected, or at least argued fiercely against, the Supreme Court's intervention in that, and he now plans an election whose campaign, whose theme is the people as expressed in the referendum against parliament. And this is an extraordinary transformation of British political discourse, and in my view very dangerous.
Well, it's happened because the referendum has injected a new element into our constitution. Parliament necessarily is involved in implementing the referendum, but it can't agree on how to do so, and there is really no mandate for what is emerging as the fallback position, which is a no-deal Brexit, which is what they're now fighting over. We've unleashed demons here which are likely to be with us for many years.
