NEW: I understand that the Queen will be asked to prorogue Parliament today at Balmoral. Three privy councillors will see her today (led by Lord Pres of Council, Jacob Rees Mogg) and ask for a prorogation in council for September 9th.
Rumour is new Queen’s speech and parliamentary session for October 14th.
Am told Cabinet to be told *after* it’s happened.
There was a recess planned anyway for conference. What this means is that parliament loses time before October 31st, returning on 14th rather than 7th. But that time will be taken up further by ceremony and parliamentary practice related to Queen’s speech and state opening.
Takeaways:
-makes stopping no deal using legal means as remainers wanted just yesterday less viable but more urgent
-thus makes no conf motion more viable again but in effect...
-we will now get one with the Queen’s speech for the new session (which is efectibely a conf vote)
This is cunning if not exactly edifying by the government. They knew they couldn’t prorogue til after brexit without complete constitutional outrage. This achieves their aims of limiting parliamentary activity and scrutiny and are betting it’s not long enough to provoke disaster.
What it also does, if is to neuter a Queen’s Speech (ie a confidence vote) as a means of stopping Brexit.
Queen’s Speech October 17th
Followed by 5 days of parliamentary debate
Takes you to October 28th
14 day FTPA period then takes you over October 31st
So all this stuff about only losing 4 days is pretty misleading.
Confusion abounding with some saying parliament could cancel the conference recess. They can’t because they’re proroguing from the second week of September. Parliament votes on a recess, not on prorogation.
This, more than anything else, is a move to prevent parliament sitting during the conference season, which it probably would have chosen to do.
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NEW: Lib Dems call on the govt to suspend arms sales to Israel.
@EdwardJDavey: “Clearly, the thought that British-made arms could have been used in strikes such as these is completely unacceptable.
“The government must take swift action to suspend arms exports to Israel."
There's been (more or less) a fragile consensus between Conservative and Labour on policy towards Israel and the war. Pressure is going to increase on Starmer to move. Possibly (and more importantly) Sunak too...
Flick Drummond, Tory MP for Meon Valley has also said arms to Israel should cease.
“This has been concerning me for some time. What worries me is the prospect of UK arms being used in Israel’s actions in Gaza which I believe have broken international law.”
For the general election, very little. This was a unique by election and little is transferable. But it does change politics before the election and possibly tells us something about the shape of politics after it as well.
In the short term the result is highly embarrassing for Keir Starmer and for Labour. The Labour vote collapsed by over 40 % points. Labour will point to the fact that they withdrew support. But that reminds us that they had to withdraw support in a safe seat, itself a shambles.
Questions for the leadership as to why the by-election was held so quickly and why the selection process happened so quickly. As it is a safe Labour seat has been handed to one of the party's most implacable opponents.
It’s not like the British Parliament makes everything about itself, no not remotely
Net result of all of this? Starmer has a lucky escape. Speaker is weaker. Commons is farcical. Nothing changes in Gaza. MPs don’t really get their vote. We continue not to scrutinise what matters (and even then not that much) , which is the government’s position and plan.
Btw attack the Speaker’s decisions or not, but the threat of violence against MPs is real. Speaker should be thinking about that. The fact we’ve just come to accept that as a kind of background to our politics is the grimmest thing of all.
Grim news from Birmingham today. City Council has announced cuts to deal with effective insolvency notice. Includes:
-sale of £750m of assets
-cuts of to public services by £300m over two years
-21% rise in Council Tax
-dimming street lights
-fortnightly bin collections
Breakdown of cuts for 2024-25
-£23.7m from adult social care
-£51.5m from children’s services
-£6.2m from housing
-£39.2m from city operations
More elsewhere. This follows long term reduction in spending power from the council, as per rest of local govt.
Libraries, cultural organisations in the city all set to endure substantial cuts. 600 job losses at the council likely.
If you’re a Birmingham resident (biggest local authority in Europe) you’re going to feel this in years ahead in all sorts of ways.
“Wokeism seems to be on the curriculum…there is confusion about basic biological facts, like what is a woman. Look at the net zero zealots…if you listen to the Today programme, I don’t recommend it, you’ll hear demands for more public spending…”
Another cheap BBC shot from Truss, for whom it’s a habit. Perhaps if she had subjected herself to more interrogations on Today and other non partisan media organisations her premiership would have gone better.
Truss: “Conservatives haven’t taken on the left wing extremists. They don’t call themselves socialists or communists any more…they’re still collectivists-it’s all about taking power away from people and families and giving power away to unaccountable bodies.”