You are currently browsing the daily archive for October 23, 2019.
It looks as if Prime Minister Boris Johnson will await yet another EU extension to Brexit.
Despite his new deal, MPs said on Tuesday, October 22, 2019, that they would not have time to read it and make a substantive judgement on it in three days’ time before sending it off to the House of Lords for deliberation with a view towards completion by October 31.
It was a disappointing day with eight hours of debate, including two votes near the end.
John Redwood MP (Conservative) rightly compared the situation to Groundhog Day. One Twitter user likened it to a broken record:
There continues to be a clear disconnect between voters and MPs:
The afternoon began with Boris making another positive case for his deal from the despatch box. He stayed to answer MPs queries. It was a lengthy session. He answered each — often repetitive — question with infinite patience and rhetorical aplomb. Our PM is no idiot.
Following that, MPs continued ‘debating’, voicing the same oral rubbish they have been since the beginning of the year.
After 7 p.m., there was good news for Boris on the first vote. A majority of 30 MPs supported Boris’s new deal, in principle:
Then came the second vote, which put a distinct spanner in the works. Most MPs thought in the end that they would not have time to study and debate the bill in full by the end of the week. That’s putting it nicely. The No vote is also anti-Brexit and anti-Boris:
Brexit and Boris aside, let’s look at why MPs do not think they can reasonably the bill within three days.
Interestingly, voters found Boris’s new deal online by Monday. I saw the link on Guido Fawkes. One of his readers supplied it.
Some pundits say that it is shorter yet similar (outside of the Northern Ireland trade backstop) to Theresa May’s deal, which was just under 600 pages long.
MPs debated Theresa May’s deal and voted it down three times earlier this year.
Some Remainers say Theresa May’s deal was never published, therefore, MPs cannot reasonably make a comparison between it and Boris’s.
The truth is that Theresa May’s deal was published in full — including online — during the time period MPs voted it down months ago. I read it myself. The BBC said that the 1,300 paper copies cost £45,637. Remainers, therefore, are being disingenuous with the truth.
There is no excuse for MPs to refuse to read Boris’s in three days, especially as it is approximately one-sixth of the size of Theresa May’s.
There is another issue here, though: the ability of MPs to read legislative language.
Now, I always thought that most MPs had law degrees. For anyone even remotely familiar with law school, that means having to absorb at least a hundred pages of legal texts every day in one’s first and second years. I base this on the American film and television series Paper Chase. If you couldn’t handle that, you had to leave law school.
However, journalist Isabel Hardman posits that most MPs cannot decipher legislative English. Interesting:
Lawyers responded to her thread, proving my earlier point:
MPs have their own staffers, possibly not up to the required standard, however:
Kezia Dugdale, who is a former leader of the Scottish Labour Party and serves as an MP for the Scottish Parliament, explains:
Boris spoke after the vote:
Jacob Rees-Mogg announced in his Business Statement that Wednesday and Thursday’s debates would be on approving the content of the Queen’s Speech rather than Brexit:
As I write on Wednesday morning, there is no clear response yet from the EU on latest developments.
Emmanuel Macron is generally the first to respond. He is in the French overseas territory of Mayotte at the moment, so there has been no personal response from him, but, last night, Agence France Presse (AFP) offered this:
We shall see. More to follow this week.
Churchmouse Campanologist 