Episode 34: A rule of law crisis in Britain

Jolyon Maugham QC … Was the prorogation of Parliament illegal? And is the Supreme Court set to find against the Boris Johnson administration? As the British executive faces off against the two other pillars of the liberal democratic system – Parliament and the Courts – hosts Luke Cooper and Zoe Williams talk to one of the barristers at the centre of the case. Quite sensationally he says the government has failed to offer a defence in Court that its motives for prorogation were sound. He names two members of the government, which, it is said, according to a high level source, refused to sign pre-prepared affidavits from the government legal service. Maugham is confident that the Supreme Court will now find against the government. We apologise for the quality of some of the sound recording on this episode which was due to a technical fault.