Going prorogue

Yeah, it’s a political entry.

Last time I did one of these, it ended with Boris Johnston being elected leader of the Tory party and, therefore, Prime Minister (or Britain Trump, I’ll let you guess who said that).  I said it was the new stage of the shitshow.  Turns out I was more right than joking.

He immediately started banging on about renegotiating the Working Arrangement, mostly to take out the backstop (that we wanted in the first place).  He did get an agreement from Angela Merkel that things would be considered if he was able to come up with a workable alternative by mid September.

The rest of the parties have been working as well, trying to find a way to stop No Deal Brexit.  The big idea is a Government of National Unity.  This would be a cross party Government which would do two things and two things only.  The first is to get another extension from the EU.  The second is to call a General Election.

Would we get the extension?  It’s very probable.  The EU has always said they would grant another extension for a determined reason and another GE is just that.

The main problem with a GNU is who the temp PM would be.  Labour are very clear on this.  As the leader of Her Majesty’s Official Opposition, it must go first to Jeremy Corbyn.  The Liberal Democrats (well, their leader anyway) and Tory rebels are against the idea of Corbyn going into a General Election from the position of PM.

The problem is, he’s the one with the most votes at the moment.  Every Labour MP would vote for him.  The SNP, Plaid Cymru and Caroline Lucas, the sole Green MP, would as well.  Some of the Lib Dems would if it meant stopping No Deal.

Some have suggested Harriet Harman as Mother of the House (longest serving female MP), but she’s said that it should be Corbyn.  The other suggestion is Ken Clarke.  He’s a Tory, which would get their rebels on board, he’s the Father of the House (longest serving male MP) and he’s already said he’s not running in the next GE so he wouldn’t use the position to boost his election chances.  But, there are some Labour MP’s who wouldn’t vote for a Tory and there are some who wouldn’t vote for Clarke, given he was a member of Maggie Thatchers cabinet.  So, would the number of Tory rebels he would carry be more than the number of Labour MP’s that wouldn’t vote for him?

Then there’s the question of if a Vote of No Confidence would pass anyway…

So, there was a big meeting on Tuesday, the result of which was a decision to try legislative means to prevent No Deal.

Enter our “esteemed” Prime Minister and the process of proroguing.

Now, proroguing is basically just suspending Parliament.  This is generally done for a few days before a Queens Speech, but it has been done for other things as well.

(Should explain a Queens Speech.  It starts each legislative session of Parliament and usually happens once a year.  Because of Brexit, however, the last one was after the GE in 2017.)

When the idea of proroguing Parliament came up before, it was in terms of suspending Parlaiment from early – mid October to the beginning of November to ensure a No Deal Brexit.

Yesterday, Boris Johnston announced there would be a Queens Speech in October.  And, as such, he was proroguing Parliament.  From early September.  For five whole weeks.

Now, it is true that includes the period of conference season, when Parliament is normally on recess, but it was possible that recess would be suspended.  So, for five weeks, there will be no scrutiny of Government, there will be no chance for legislation to prevent No Deal, there will be no chance for a VoNC.  Even after this, there would need to be a debate and a vote on the Queens Speech and Delirium alone knows how long that’ll take.

This has, quite rightly, caused quite a lot of outrage.  For all the talk about taking control back to Parliament, it’s quite simply preposterous that Parliament isn’t going to be allowed to meet and prevent huge damage being done to the country.  It’s outrageous that the voices of the people will not be heard in order to stop something that most did not vote for and do not want to begin with.

This is not democracy, it’s basically just short of a fucking dictatorship.

The Government whip in the House of Lords, a guy who has served in every Tory front bench since John Major was PM has resigned his position over this.  Even worse for the Tories, Ruth Davidson quit as leader of the Scottish Conservative Party.  While she said the reason was to spend time with her family, it’s no secret she’s not a fan of the PM and it’s easy to see he’s also part of the reason.  The timing suggests it’s also about the proroguing.

This is particularly bad for the Tories, because she’s the only reason they have any relevancy in Scotland at all.  It’s all been her.  Now, with the Lib Dems being the obvious pro Union option (their anti Brexit stance will work well in a country where 66% of the EU ref vote went to Remain), losing her will hurt them.

What’s that Chinese curse about interesting times again?

Will