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Portrait of the week: A Supreme Court ruling, Labour’s messy conference and Donald Trump’s ‘impeachment’

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Eleven justices of the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that in advising the Queen to prorogue parliament ‘the Prime Minister’s advice to Her Majesty was unlawful, void and of no effect’. This was because the prorogation had ‘the effect of frustrating or preventing, without reasonable justification, the ability of parliament to carry out its constitutional functions’. The court was not ‘concerned with the Prime Minister’s motive’. The court cited the Case of Proclamations (1611) to show that the limits of prerogative powers were determined by the courts. The judgment overturned the decision of the High Court that the prorogation should not even be considered by the courts. Lady Hale, the President of the Supreme Court, read out the judgment wearing a large spider brooch. Since parliament had not been prorogued, John Bercow the Speaker of the House of Commons, arranged for it to sit from the next day. Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, flew back from the UN in New York. ‘We should have an election,’
he said.

Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour leader, told the party conference in Brighton: ‘I will be a very different kind of prime minister.’ He had taken over the slot allocated for a speech by Tom Watson, the deputy leader, in order to return to the Commons the next day. Jon Lansman, the founder of Momentum, had earlier tabled an unsuccessful motion to abolish the elected deputy leader’s post. Labour said it would abolish private schools and put their resources to state use. John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, said that under Labour the working week would be four days or 32 hours, with ‘no loss of pay’. The world tour of Frank Carter & the Rattlesnakes was delayed when the lead singer was rescued by 11 firemen from a crashed car in Devon with bruises and a dislocated kneecap.

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