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Boris will get Brexit done. Boris will sell the NHS. Boris will invest, Boris can't do maths, Boris, Boris, Boris, Boris, Boris.

Whichever side you're on, there's an awful lot of noise about what 'Boris' will do. And it is the thing that is being slipped quietly past that we should all pay more attention to.

Only a few hardy souls ever read a party manifesto, and most of them skim it for the best bits or hunt something specific. They're pure showbusiness, full of promises and polish, and it can be hard to keep your mind on what lies behind the words.

Especially the ones buried between yawn-inducing pledges to protect democracy and support NATO. But in the bottom-right corner of text-heavy page 48 of the Tory manifesto, there lurks a paragraph which should chill the marrow of everyone who reads it.

It pledges to put Mr Johnson above the law.

If what this manifesto promises were to become fact, Mr Johnson would be the only person in the entire United Kingdom whose work decisions could not be ruled illegal.

His job would not be subject to 2,000 years of legal precedent, human rights laws, equality considerations, or even a freshly-minted law made by Parliament.

In the interests of "effective government", the ancient rights of Royal Prerogative could be used to overrule Parliament, so that the government and Prime Minister could act illegally, without the tiniest chance of stopping it.

This is not the separation of powers: this is the concentration of power in one man, and his hand-picked goons.

(Image: PA)

If I were to break a law in the course of my job, even unwittingly, I'd be up before the beak. So would you and everyone else in this country, with the sole exception of Her Majesty the Queen.

She can break whatever law she pleases, on the grounds that she owns the place. She does not do so, because when her nine-times great grandfather Charles I tried it he got his head lopped off.

It was that incident, among others, which meant the feudal right to rule by decree was removed from the monarch and placed in the hands of the people, by way of their elected government. It was this Royal Prerogative which Theresa May was stopped from using when she wanted to trigger Article 50 without Parliamentary consent, and which Boris Johnson was told off for abusing when he tried to close Parliament for 5 weeks at a time of crisis.

It is this right which is used by Prime Ministers to hand out honours to cronies, ennoble donors, amend legislation, dissolve or reopen Parliament, declare war, and sign or leave international treaties.

(Image: REUTERS)

There are three parts of our system of government - the courts, Parliament, and the executive. To remove the latter from the scrutiny or control of the other two would be an act of constitutional unbalancing so bad it could lead only to tyranny.

Imagine a country in which the PM could Brexit or not Brexit, without anyone's approval. Imagine one in which the NHS could be sold, if just one person fancied the idea.

In May, judicial review stopped the government hacking your computer or mobile phone without a warrant. In January, it produced a ruling that working single mums were having their Universal Credit miscalculated.

Two years ago, Friends of the Earth and the RSPB successfully used it to stop the government increasing the costs of judicial review, something which would have made the legal system available only to millionaires.

Judicial reviews are the ultimate arbiter of what's right, legal, and fair. The process has, probably without you even realising, improved your life and rights.

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They are also incredibly embarrassing, if you are a bad politician in charge of a bad government.

Current judicial reviews include a request for a ruling about whether an English court can overrule a Scottish one on child maintenance; migrant deportations; whether a bank is liable for the sex assaults a doctor carried out during medical examinations it demanded; criminal detentions; and international trade.

Imagine what a bad politician in charge of a bad government could do, if English law was imposed on the other 3 nations in our union without consent; if people could be deported without checks; if employers were never liable for the actions of their staff; if suspects were detained unlawfully; if international trade deals were signed in secret.

It does not matter where you stand politically. Such actions would make Brexit not a democratic exercise, but a democratic abomination. It would make any government, of any party, a monstrosity.

And coupled with Mr Johnson's promise, elsewhere on page 48, to scrap the Fixed Term Parliaments Act, it might even mean he didn't need to call general elections as often as he should, or perhaps even at all.

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The manifesto is, at this stage, mere words. To be enacted it needs a walloping Tory majority, and two houses of Parliament packed to the ceiling with people who will do whatever Mr Johnson says. It also, if you take the words at face value, requires a constitutional commission returning a report recommending exactly what he wants it to.

He's not on course for a majority. But he is doing very well at the three-cup trick - shaking hands or getting heckled on the stump, repeating the claim it's all about Brexit, and denying whatever Labour has said today. It's not the cups that matter. It is the pea.

There is no politician who has seized power like this who used it for good. There is no government that was able to ignore its courts that subsequently stayed within the law. There is no democracy which did this and remained a democracy.

Who did this before? Why did they do it? What happened afterwards?

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Mr Johnson is not like Hitler, or Stalin, or Pol Pot. He has less idea of what he's doing. He's merely trying to force through Brexit, without the humiliation of courts or Parliament telling him he's doing it wrong.

But after Johnson will come someone else. And they will not reverse this power grab: they never do. Imagine what a Blair, a Thatcher or a Corbyn could do, without the judges checking their homework. If you don't want a dangerous Leftie doing all this, you need to ensure the current lot doesn't give them the key.

Boris is selling you Brexit, but what he aims to deliver is chaos, a president-in-all-but-name. The Queen herself would be weakened, replaced not by a temporary politician subject to public whim, but shouldered aside by a joint head of state with the unfettered powers of Henry VIII.

Brexit may be the vehicle, but 'world king' has always been the destination. The only way to stop this coup is to spread the word, and deny King Boris the majority he needs to destroy all that our country stands for.