For the first time in living memory, MPs seized control of the parliamentary timetable today, in order to hold a series of indicative votes to work out parliament’s preferred Brexit outcome.
As expected, the constitutional upheaval precipitated by Oliver Letwin has provoked a fair amount of controversy in the House of Commons, with MPs opposing the move pointing out that if the Letwinites were not happy with the way the government was handling Brexit, they ought to trigger a no-confidence vote in the Prime Minister.
But the debate turned into something resembling a public school squabble this afternoon when Tory MPs Jacob Rees-Mogg and Nick Boles squared off in the Chamber. When Boles stood up to argue that he could be in support of the PM, without endorsing her Brexit strategy, the Old Etonian Mogg quipped back that Boles’ education at Winchester College might be to blame for his line of argument:
‘My honourable friend makes a characteristically Wykehamist point: highly intelligent but fundamentally wrong.
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