‘Enemies of the people” was how the Daily Mail referred to the three judges who held that British constitutional law required that Parliament should vote before the Government can take Britain out of the European Union.
The phrase has a history. It was used in the time of Roman emperors such as Nero. More famously, it was used by the French revolutionaries, who conducted mass executions by guillotine during the period known as the Reign of Terror. It was also used in Stalin’s USSR. Those declared to be enemies of the people were sent for execution or exile without any procedure which we would recognise as a fair trial. The Daily Mail was obviously not proposing that the three judges be sent to the guillotine or the gulag. So what did the joke mean?
