Alert after news of 2nd Parliament suspension
LONDON: Whitehall and Buckingham Palace are on red alert after being warned that Prime Minister Boris Johnson could attempt to prorogue Parliament for a second time if he is defeated in the courts or tied down further by members of parliament over Brexit, The Mail on Sunday has learned.
The “nuclear option” is understood to have been discussed by the prime minister’s closest advisers in a move that could see the government, Parliament and the courts plunged into a legal quagmire just days before Britain’s planned exit from the European Union on Oct 31.
Concerned officials believe nothing is off-limits for Downing Street’s current chaos strategy to avoid letting MPs pass fresh legislation halting Britain’s exit from the EU, even crippling political institutions to let the UK slip out on “No Deal” terms.
Fears of a fresh suspension were heightened after the prime minister’s chief adviser, Dominic Cummings, used a meeting of special advisers on Friday night to quip that executive power could be used to re-suspend the Commons were the Government to be defeated in the Supreme Court on Tuesday.
Downing Street’s decision to suspend Parliament is being challenged after a Scottish court declared the move unlawful.
However, a No. 10 source insists that Cummings was joking about proroguing Parliament for a second time and repeated that the prime minister had been clear that MPs would have time to discuss Brexit when the Commons returns on Oct 14.
A Whitehall source said such a scenario meant it would immediately go to the Supreme Court, but that was the easiest way to tie everyone up in legal knots and let the clock run down even further and there will only be two weeks left by then.
And a Tory source said the idea was f ***** g mad and would see attempts to topple Johnson by his own party.