Quote of the day 1st September 2019

"We won’t insult our readers’ intelligence by parroting the Government’s case for prorogation.
  •  Yes, this Parliamentary session is already the longest since before the English Civil War.
  •  Yes, a Queen’s Speech is therefore well overdue: Valerie Vaz, Labour’s Shadow Commons Leader, has called for one at least three times since May.
  •  Yes, Boris Johnson doubtless has legislation he wants to implement (though how he expects to get it passed without a working majority, goodness only knows).
  •  And, yes, the number of days that Parliament now won’t sit is only six more than was originally planned.

But to compare an autumn recess without prorogation to one with it would be to compare apples and pears. Prorogation ends the session: during it, no motions or questions can be tabled. And this will be a very long prorogation: it is to last the best part of five weeks.

 At a stroke, the Prime Minister has thus prevented those MPs opposed to a No Deal Brexit, or indeed to Brexit itself, from seizing control of the Commons timetable and extending the September sitting into the Party Conference season.

 In short, he has given them as little time to postpone Brexit on October 31 as he can get away with – just as Ben Wallace suggested in a moment of on-camera candour.

This is bending the rules. But it is not breaking them. 

Parliament is not being shut down. (It will sit next week and after October 14.)

Johnson is not acting unconstitutionally (because if he had been, the Queen would not have agreed the prorogation).

And he is not, repeat not, re-enacting the Reichstag Fire. 

The Commons can pass a no confidence motion in him – this week, if it wishes. At the risk of invoking Godwin’s Law, the German Communist Party was not in a position to move such a vote against Hitler in 1933.

One has to be very clever indeed to suggest a parallel so profoundly stupid, but that’s the effect of Brexit for you."

(Paul Goodman, former MP and current executive editor of Conservative Home, opening paragraphs of a very interesting article which argues that Boris Johnson's real plan is to get a deal and which you can read in full here.)

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