Boris Johnson, Brexit, and Britain’s Constitutional Quagmire

The authors of The Federalist Papers, that great series of essays defending the Constitution of the United States, set out to convince the public that democracy, at least in its original, ancient Athenian form, was not only impossible, but dangerous. Their preferred system of government was a republic, based on the principle of representation.

Even some of the most radical Enlightenment thinkers of the 18th century—those who supported universal suffrage, the rights of women, and the abolition of slavery—rejected direct democracy, or “simple democracy,” as Thomas Paine called it. Direct democracy, they argued, is government without the benefit of reasoned deliberation, leaving an authoritarian executive justifying its power with populist rhetoric. That, at any rate, was how the Founding Fathers viewed Pericles of Athens.

The United Kingdom’s prime minister, Boris Johnson, who studied classics in college, says his greatest hero is Pericles. Which explains a lot. Johnson’s populism is what secured the support of his party’s members and brought him to Downing Street. Traditionally in the U.K., the government’s legitimacy comes from its support among members of Parliament. At the core of its is the principle that prime ministers can continue in office only for as