PARLIAMENT SUSPENSION ‘UNLAWFUL’
Has Labour shot itself in the foot again with its latest Brexit stance? Chief reporter Martin Shipton wonders whether the party has learnt anything from the European Parliament election
BORIS Johnson is facing furious demands for the immediate recall of MPs to Westminster after the suspension of Parliament was ruled unlawful by Scotland’s highest civil court.
In a dramatic judgment, the Court of Session in Edinburgh found ministers had stopped MPs from sitting for the “improper purpose of stymying Parliament”.
It said advice given by ministers to the Queen which led to the five-week prorogation was therefore “unlawful and is thus null and of no effect”.
The Government immediately announced it was lodging an appeal against the ruling with the Supreme Court, with a hearing set for Tuesday.
However, opposition MPs said the prorogation should be set aside without delay so ministers could be held to account for their Brexit plans in the Commons.
Shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir said: “What Boris Johnson should do is to urgently recall Parliament. We should be back there this afternoon, or tomorrow, so we can debate this judgment, and we can decide what to do next.
“He should do the right thing now, which is to reopen Parliament, let us back to do our job and to decide what to do next.
“That is within his power, and we must take the decisions when we are recalled and back actually doing the job we are sent to Parliament to do.”
Former attorney general Dominic Grieve warned that if ministers had misled the Queen over the reasons for prorogation, Mr Johnson’s position
would be untenable and he would have to resign.
“It is absolutely central to our constitution that the relationship between the Prime Minister and the Queen is one of the utmost confidentiality and the utmost good faith. Central,” he told the BBC.
“So, if it were to be the case that the Government had misled the Queen about the reasons for suspending Parliament and the motives for it, that would be a very serious matter indeed.
“Indeed in my view, it would then be the moment for Mr Johnson to resign and very swiftly.”
Wales’ First Minister Mark Drakeford tweeted: “I said last week that the Prime Minister’s decision to silence Parliament and close the door on democracy was unconstitutional. The Scottish Court has now agreed that the decision was also unlawful.”
And Cardiff West MP Kevin Brennan was one of a handful of Remainer MPs who, in the wake of the judgment, went to the Commons chamber for nonexistent PMQs.
He tweeted: “It should be #pmqs but Parliament illegally prorogued. I’ve come to the chamber but no sign of the Prime Minister.”
Cardiff South & Penarth Labour MP Stephen Doughty replied: “I’m heading down too, Kevin Brennan. Time we all were back instead of blocked from holding this reckless lying government to account. #RecallParliamentNow.”
Downing Street insisted the fiveweek prorogation was so the new Government could set out its legislative programme in a Queen’s Speech on October 14.
The Prime Minister’s official spokesman rejected claims that the true purpose was to prevent MPs thwarting his pledge to take Britain out of the EU by October 31, with or without a deal with Brussels.
“We have set out the reasons in public why we have prorogued. That is to allow us to bring forward a new legislative programme,” the spokesman said.
The spokesman added that the Government would abide by the ruling of the Supreme Court, which is also considering an appeal against a ruling by the High Court in London which found that the suspension was lawful.
In the meantime, officials said Parliament would remain prorogued.
The unanimous ruling by three judges sitting at the Court of Session followed an appeal by a group of around 70 parliamentarians who had appealed against an earlier ruling that the prorogation was lawful.
Judge Lord Carloway told the court: “We are of the opinion that the advice given by the Government to her majesty the Queen to prorogue Parliament was unlawful and that the prorogation itself was unlawful.”
SNP MP Joanna Cherry, who led the case, said Mr Johnson must now bring MPs back to Westminster.
“The court agreed it is unlawful to suspend the UK Parliament for the specific purpose of preventing Parliament from scrutinising the Brexit process and holding this shambolic Tory Government’s extreme Brexit plans to account,” she said.
“We have uncovered more and more evidence that this was a plot by Boris Johnson and his cronies to prevent us from stopping them taking Scotland and the UK off a Brexit cliff edge by forcing through a damaging no deal against the will of Parliament.
“Boris Johnson cannot be allowed to break the law with impunity.”
Liberal Democrat Brexit spokesman Tom Brake warned ministers could not ignore the implications of the ruling.
“The prorogation of Parliament was never more than a power grab,” he said.
“It was an authoritarian move by Boris Johnson designed to overrule and silence the people and their representatives and to force a disastrous no-deal Brexit on our country.”
WITH the focus having been on the dysfunctionality of the Conservative Party for the past week or so, perhaps Labour was feeling left out.
Not to worry: the renewed feud between leader Jeremy Corbyn and deputy Tom Watson has brought it back into the limelight.
On Tuesday evening it emerged that Labour would not, after all, be coming out for Remain, but would be going into a general election campaigning for a new referendum between Remain and what is optimistically described as a “credible Brexit option”.
This fence-sitting policy was devised at a meeting involving Mr Corbyn and his party’s financial backers, the trade unions.
Since the unions retain significant voting power within the party, it is likely that this formula will be confirmed at Labour’s annual conference later in the month.
When the news emerged, many of the party’s elected politicians reacted with anger.
For Vaughan Gething, the Health Minister in Wales, it was “BS”. He tweeted: “We can’t ask people to renegotiate then might ask the public to vote that down. We will deserve all the ridicule we get if this is the manifesto [sic].”
Mr Watson himself was also unhappy, saying in a speech: “My experience on the doorstep tells me most of those who’ve deserted us over our Brexit policy did so with deep regret and would greatly prefer to come back; they just want us to take an unequivocal position that, whatever happens, we’ll fight to remain, and to sound like we mean it. If we did it, we could win, whereas if we don’t, I fear we won’t.”
Last night Mr Corbyn made it clear he has a different view, stating: “It’s Tom’s view ... I don’t accept it, I don’t agree with it.”
Even at this late stage, four months after the party took a hammering in the European Parliament election,
Labour is desperately trying to keep on board both Remain and Leave voters.
Yet by failing to have a simple, uncomplicated position, it risks losing votes to unequivocally Remain parties like Plaid Cymru, the Liberal Democrats and the Greens, and in the other direction to the Brexit Party.
The difficulty is compounded by the fact that the two leading figures in the party are at loggerheads with each other. When the leader and the deputy leader can’t agree over the most important political issue of the day, what confidence can the public have in the party’s ability to govern?
A lot of the party’s problem stems from its position on the sequencing of a general election and a referendum.
Labour’s official position is that a general election should come first, followed by a referendum after it has sought to negotiate a new deal with the EU.
The difficulty is that any election will be dominated by the question of how to move forward on Brexit.
Most people will cast their votes based on the parties’ stated policy on the issue.
Brexit supporters will vote, in the main, for the Conservative Party or the Brexit Party. How the votes split between them will depend on where we are with Brexit at the time of the election.
Remain supporters will, in Wales, find themselves drawn towards Plaid Cymru or the Liberal Democrats, and to those Labour candidates who have deviated from the leadership’s fudged position. But Labour will lose the votes of many of their own supporters, as they did in May at the European Parliament election.
Assuming that a general election takes place while we are still in the EU, Labour can expect to come under huge pressure to define what a “credible” Brexit deal would amount to.
The truth is that no conceivable Brexit deal would, from an economic point of view, be as good as what we have already.
For Labour to pretend otherwise is politically dishonest.
There are those who will point out that, back in the 1970s when a Labour government led by Harold Wilson called a referendum on whether the UK should stay in what was then known as the Common Market, ministers were allowed to campaign on either side.
That’s true – but the political climate of the time was far less toxic than the one of today – and there wasn’t a general election in the offing before the referendum where parties other than the Conservatives posed a major threat.
The Labour MPs who raise concerns about what the “credible Brexit deal” could amount to are right.
If it’s a customs “arrangement” without membership of or unfettered access to the single market, it certainly isn’t a credible alternative. In a sense, though, that wouldn’t matter nearly so much if the referendum came first. Labour’s Remain supporters would be content that they had the opportunity to vote directly for an exit from Brexit. There would be a resolution of the matter one way or the other, and then everyone could move on.
Such an option would surely be to Mr Corbyn’s advantage at the following general election. He would be able to focus on the radical overhaul of the British economy that he wants to see, with more rights for workers and a rolling back of elite privilege.
As it is, Labour is likely to be stuck with a Brexit policy that will bring it more woe.
With both major parties in such a mess, it is difficult to see how either could win a majority of seats at a general election.
If Mr Johnson fails to deliver Brexit by October 31, he will be in trouble with his own supporters.
In normal circumstances, Labour should then romp home at an election. That hardly anyone believes that to be a serious possibility demonstrates what a parlous state both main parties are in.
POLITICS has rarely been more unpredictable than it is right now. People are now less likely to be loyal to a single party than at any time in our recent history and that trend has compounded with the divisive Brexit referendum.
But how will that translate into what happens at the General Election that appears likely to happen in the coming months?
Is Boris Johnson still the electorally appealing figure who managed to win two terms in office as Tory mayor of Labour-leaning London?
Or have his authoritarian actions, and failures, of recent weeks damaged his public appeal?
On the other side of the – currently prorogued – House, is Jeremy Corbyn gaining support with Labour’s moves towards a second referendum?
We’ve looked at a number of different polls to see how the picture looks right now for the political parties and their leaders.
■ The Conservatives are still in front, but some polls show it’s closer than others...
The new government has lost six successive votes in the Commons, and Boris Johnson has lost the support of key allies, including his brother, Jo, and the leader of the Scottish Tories, Ruth Davidson.
But how is that shaping how people think about the parties?
Think-tank Britain Elects plots the results of a number of different polls to show the average and “reduce volatility”.
The latest results show that when based on rolling averages, the Conservatives are in the lead with 33%, Labour has 24%, Lib Dems 18%, Brexit Party 13% and Greens 4%.
However, two individual polls since September 6 have found a closer gap.
Deltapoll spoke to 2,208 people online between September 5 and 7 and put the Tories on 31% and Labour on 28% with the Lib Dems on 17% and Brexit Party on 13%.
Similarly, Comres found a 4% gap between the two biggest parties in its online survey of 2,009 adults from September 4 and 6, with the Tories on 31% and Labour on 27%.
However, YouGov’s most recent poll carried out on September 9 and 10, put the Tories on 32% and Labour on 23% – a 9% lead, with Lib Dems on 19%, Brexit on 14%, Greens on 7% and others at 5%.
■ Boris Johnson was elected Tory leader in the belief he was a unifying figure... but this may be changing...
Lord Ashcroft has written for Conservative Home about his latest focus group – sussing out what people think about politics and politicians. He was looking at Barnet and St Ives.
In his post, he says he expected Labour voters to be divided, but said Conservative Remain voters also had mixed views.
“While some thought he was divisive, dictatorial and untrustworthy (“I don’t think he’s as proper as some MPs – he can probably go rogue”) for others he was colourful, “flavoursome” and “quite statesmanlike compared to the rest”.
A focus group for Britain Thinks found that the Prime Minister was seen as “energetic” and “decisive” but lacking in “humility” and “empathy”.
When it spoke to voters in Reading, one woman described him as “a bull in a china shop – careering around smashing things”. Another compared him to a peacock because “whatever he does he stands out”. Some admired this but others didn’t trust him.
■ This seems to be translating into shifting polling results...
YouGov asked people in both August and September how they thought the Prime Minister was doing.
Of the 1,676 adults polled, 22% said they thought he would do well in August but that dropped by two percentage points in September.
Those who thought he would “do well but he’s done worse than expected” were 2% between August 13-14, but are up to 13% now.
Those who thought he would do badly and “he has” are up from 28 to
40.
■ But he still gets more support than Jeremy Corbyn...
A Britain Thinks/Financial Times poll of 2,103 people suggests that Mr Johnson still enjoys much stronger support than the leader of the Labour Party.
Of those polled between August 30 and September 1, 30% preferred the Tory leader as Prime Minister,
d with 14% for Mr Corbyn. er, 34% of those polled said not know who would make eader – a bigger proportion ported either Mr Johnson rbyn.
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te their exasperation with nt, one thing that united all icipants was that none of nted to see an early general wrote Lord Ashcroft. to the country again would te of time, money and enerwhat was needed was for nt Parliament to do its job: ntry’s already voted! We’ve r decision, we’ve made our
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Again, Lord Ashcroft asked how bad people thought no-deal would be.
One response was: “I can’t believe Europe won’t want our spending power.”
Another was: “You can scaremonger us all you like, we’re not the ones making the decisions.
“So much nonsense has been spoken that the truth gets lost.
“It’s very difficult to know what to believe and what sources to trust.”
■ Voters want pacts...
A poll in the Times at the weekend said that 73% of Conservative voters and 79% of Brexit Party supporters want a pact between the parties for the next election.
Polling for the Financial Times suggested that pacts could be decisive in the next election.
The paper’s projections suggested that if half the Brexit Party vote went to the Tories and Labour and the Lib Dems remained at odds, the Conservatives would sweep the board at the next general election with 366 seats.
However, if the Lib Dems and Labour struck a pact in which the Lib Dems did not stand in 100 key Labour/Tory marginals and Labour did not stand where the Lib Dems had the best chance of winning, then Labour would emerge as the biggest party.
That polling was also done on the basis of polls suggesting that the Tories had an 11% point lead over Labour.
■ Just one in five voters think Parliament is in touch with the public about Brexit...
YouGov polling from September 5-6 shows that when looking at the general population, 30% of the general population think Boris Johnson is reflecting the public mood, 19% that MPs are and 40% that neither is.
■ Leave voters want the Prime Minister to break the law...
Another YouGov poll carried out over the weekend of September 7 and 8 found that 52% of Leave voters want Mr Johnson to break the law by refusing to ask the EU for a Brexit deadline extension.
Only 28% put the law before the Brexit deadline, while the remaining 21% said they didn’t know what he should do.
■ But, overall, people say he should do no such thing...
Among the public as a whole, 50% of Brits want the Prime Minister to abide by the law compared to 28% who would want him to break it.
Half (50%) of those who voted for the Conservative Party in 2017 would want the Tory leader to flout the law and refuse to ask the EU for a Brexit deadline extension – only a third (34%) see it as more important for the leader of the nation to operate within the law.
By contrast, 77% of Remain voters, 76% of Lib Dem voters and 69% of Labour voters all say that Johnson should refrain from breaking the law on this matter.
And on the big question... Remain or Leave? A Panelbase poll of 1,013 people on September 5 and 6 found Remain on 54% and Leave on 46%.
If you make the question into nodeal Brexit or Remain the percentages shift slightly to Remain 57%, Leave 43%.
Deltapoll (46% Remain to 40% Leave) and YouGov (46% Remain to 41% Leave) have reported similar findings since the start of September.
This is far from conclusive but reflects what polls have consistently shown in recent months, that Remain has a narrow lead over Leave in the polls (just as it did in the months before the referendum of June 2016 in which Remain lost).