‘Shut Commons to derail Remain delaying tactic’
PARLIAMENT should be temporarily shut down if a Remainer plot to wreck Brexit succeeds, senior Eurosceptics demanded yesterday.
Labour is supporting a backbench bid to delay departure from the European Union until next year if backing for a deal cannot be secured.
Jacob Rees-Mogg branded the move a “constitutional outrage” and warned the Queen may have to suspend the Commons.
Fears that Brexit could be derailed after Theresa May’s deal was crushed have fuelled claims that Leave campaigners will back the Prime Minister in the coming weeks.
But Mr Rees-Mogg said he was no “soft touch” and will only support an EU deal if contentious Irish border backstop plans are removed.
Labour’s Yvette Cooper is trying to secure time for a Bill that would delay Brexit by nine months if a deal is not signed off by February 26.
Support is growing and shadow chancellor John McDonnell said it was “highly likely” Labour will back it.
Threats
Mr Rees-Mogg said the Government could use prorogation, the trigger for bringing a parliamentary session to an end, to stop Remainer threats to Brexit becoming law.
“I hope it will not be necessary for Her Majesty’s stay at Sandringham to be interrupted for her in person to prorogue Parliament,” he said. But the chairman of the European Research Group of Eurosceptic Conservatives said the Government would be entitled if MPs undermined constitutional conventions.
He also lashed out at MPs trying to block Brexit after voting to start the process. “Either the people who voted for those Acts didn’t know what they were doing or they have forgotten,” he said.
At an event staged by the Eurosceptic think tank Bruges Group in Westminster, Mr Rees-Mogg said any deal would be better than not leaving at all but argued Mrs May’s withdrawal agreement was “not good enough”.
A shift in tone from Dublin over the backstop shows “at last things are going our way”, he said. The deal could be made more acceptable to Leavers, the MP said, but “It has to be legally binding.”
A Downing Street spokesman said they were not aware suspending Parliament had been discussed in No 10.