Terry Sarten: Expect to see Great Rioting Britain

Prime Minister Boris Johnson's Brexit moves could lead to mass protests in Great Britain. Photo / NZ Herald

I am writing this on a Thursday night. By the time you read this on Saturday morning I predict the citizens of Great Britain will have taken to the streets protesting against Prime Minister Boris Johnson's moves to sideline Parliament so he can get his no-deal Brexit past any democratic challenge.

Hong Kong has shown the world how a people's movement can put pressure on their autocratic government and agitate for change. Brits could adopt some of their tactics. The umbrella as a symbol of resistance would be ideal – it rains a lot in the UK and the umbrella is a very stylish British icon.

The 'flow like water' approach used in Hong Kong is proving very effective. Protesting in a fluid way, moving in and out of areas, has proved hard to combat by authorities. The increasingly brutal response to protesters has not deterred demonstrations and instead has energised whole sections of the population.

Hong Kong is the shop front for China so all this action is happening in view of the wider world. Unrest in mainland China has often managed to camouflage repression and avoid the global gaze but Hong Kong is a different story.

Brits will be looking at this and thinking if the people of Hong Kong can take to the streets to demand democracy then so can we. If they do not rise up and voice their opposition to the Prime Minister's moves to mute democracy, they will not be able to complain when the country stumbles into chaos and a massive economic recession.

Johnson is attempting to ghost Winston Churchill's Dunkirk spirit. Perhaps citizens could reverse that nostalgic gambit by taking to hundreds of small boats and crossing the channel to Dunkirk and landing on the beach in France to claim political asylum? The basis for asylum being that they are fleeing an unelected Prime Minister who has taken a step towards dictatorship and shut down Parliament to silence opposition.

This may seem far fetched but then again so much of the Brexit saga (it is a bit like a period costume drama) is based in nostalgia.

The Tories and ruling classes are hankering for a return to a mythical Britain that once had an empire and modelled the best bits of democracy to the world. This has been stoked by the likes of Nigel Farage and Johnson himself telling blatant untruths about the EU.

They had lots to say about the EU diminishing the great in Great Britain with a vast web of red tape (factually incorrect) and conveniently forgetting the huge amounts of money the EU injected into the UK by way of subsidies and investment in regions all over the British Isles. With Brexit that will all disappear. Perhaps, like the Joni Mitchell song says, "You don't know what you've got till it's gone" will be the refrain as they discover what they have lost.

It may be that Johnson will also disappear. If, as I am predicting, there is a massive public uprising including a walk out by civil servants, then he may be gone in two weeks as the clamour for him to resign becomes deafening.

There is already a rebellious element within the British public service talking of taking action to ensure their masters are not ditching the democratic principles that guide parliamentary decision making. Action by the civil servants who make the wheels of government turn would make the Prime Minister helpless and force negotiations to mollify the inevitable collapse of systems that leaving Brexit without a deal would bring.

The alternative is that the couple of second-hand water cannon Johnson bought, as one of the silly things he did while mayor of London, might come out of storage and be turned on the very people whose taxes paid for them.

Terry Sarten (aka Tel) is a writer, musician and social worker