Boris Johnson announced this morning that he will attempt to schedule a Queen’s speech on 14 October, and will suspend parliament for several weeks in September to do so – cutting down the amount of time MPs have in parliament to prevent a no-deal Brexit.
It’s entirely normal for a new government to schedule a Queen’s speech on taking power, and will usually suspend parliament beforehand (though not normally for this length of time). Boris Johnson’s decision will also bring an end to one of the longest parliamentary sessions in history, and will not close parliament during the actual Brexit date, as many anti no-dealers initially feared.
Nonetheless, as expected, as soon as the prorogation was announced there was a clamour of hysterical reactions from Remain-leaning politicians and public figures, claiming that Boris’s decision was a constitutional outrage.
Here are the best reactions of the bunch:
Flying out of the traps was the former Labour minister and fully-fledged Remainer, Lord Adonis, who suggested that the government’s plan was a ‘constitutional outrage’ that would be ‘hotly contested’ in parliament.
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