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Worth reading David’s speech (in the Hansard link further down the thread) on the threat to prorogue Parliament in the run up to Halloween.
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A question for lawyers is whether such an action would be unconstitutional in the sense of being capable of challenge in the courts. I think (and I think David thinks) that it would: but no one can be certain.
But our constitution is primarily a political one: and David is right in that wider sense. It would be a crisis of the order of 1641 or 1688. And like those crises, it would throw wide open the legitimacy of the government: its moral claim to have its orders executed and obeyed.
I would add that the same problem of political legitimacy arises if Parliament sits but is prevented from expressing its view by procedural means or if it passes a motion which is ignored.
The political and democratic reality of that situation is little different from that of prorogation: it would open up the question of the political legitimacy - its moral claim to be obeyed - of the government that persisted in a no deal strategy.
