Time to prorogue parliament and sort out this mess

“My Lords, it not being convenient for Her Majesty personally to be present here this day, she has been pleased to cause a Commission under the Great Seal to be prepared for proroguing this present Parliament.”

Those are the words this country urgently needs to hear uttered by Baroness Evans of Bowes Park, Leader of the House of Lords, announcing the temporary suspension of the present Parliament which has lost the confidence of the British people. The proposal that Parliament should be prorogued until after Brexit has come into effect on 29 March has been advanced by Andrew Roberts, the eminent historian.

In a tweet he wrote: “A strong PM would prorogue Parliament till 30 March as soon as it became clear that Parliament was about to flout the will of the people. She would be well within her constitutional rights, and protecting democracy.”

The obvious flaw in the suggestion is the need for “a strong PM” to implement this course of action. Nevertheless, the idea of prorogation of Parliament is a perfectly lawful and constitutionally practical solution to the increasingly irresponsible behaviour of the House of Commons in its frenzy to prevent Brexit, i.e. to defy the democratically expressed mandate of the electorate.

All that would be required is for the Prime Minister to advise the Queen to grant a prorogation of Parliament and the unquiet spirits at Westminster would be suspended from activity for a limited period of time. Prorogation is not so drastic as a dissolution of Parliament: no general election would ensue and MPs would retain their seats. Under the Fixed-term Parliaments Act the Prime Minister needs the consent of two-thirds of MPs to a premature dissolution, but not a prorogation. A prorogation only ends the current session of Parliament which is recalled for a new session on the appointed date, with a State Opening.

A prorogation would fit appropriately into the current parliamentary timetable since there was no Queen’s Speech in 2018, a two-year session having been granted to enable MPs to focus on Brexit legislation. Parliament has rejected the only Withdrawal Agreement that is acceptable to the EU, so that automatic exit on WTO terms on 29 March is now the lawfully prescribed outcome.

Parliament passed that legislation and is now trying to renege upon it. In the immediate aftermath of the EU referendum MPs paid lip service to respecting the democratic result and went through the motions of enabling Brexit, in the hope that they would be able to water down the eventual outcome to Brexit In Name Only. Now, hedged in by their own hypocritical legislation and becoming desperate as the deadline approaches, they speak openly of “stopping Brexit”.

In this panic they have begun, unforgivably, to erode the constitution. Britain’s unwritten constitution is a delicate web of rights and conventions, reliant on all parties respecting tradition. When John Bercow tore up Erskine May, rejected the formal advice of the Parliamentary Clerk and allowed Remainers to amend an unamendable Commons motion he broke with constitutional convention for partisan reasons and moved from evolutionary to revolutionary politics.

This signalled the determination of a Remainer House of Commons to shred its own rules and seize power by passing impermissible legislation with the complicity of the Speaker. If left unchallenged, this parliamentary jacquerie will reduce the executive to nullity and reverse the decision of 17.4 million voters. Yet Brexit is an international treaty which only the executive can negotiate. That is a coup d’etat.

This situation exposes the vulnerability of the British constitution if people stop playing by the rules. However, its intricate system of checks and balances provides a remedy for any such overreach. The ultimate safeguard is the Royal Prerogative. Prorogation of Parliament is a prerogative power, exercised by the Queen on the advice of her Prime Minister. It provides the adequate remedy for any usurpation of power by the Commons.

There is currently every sign that the Remainer-dominated House of Commons intends to throw constitutional propriety out of the window and set about demolishing the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018, the legislation that guarantees implementation of the electorate’s decision by referendum to leave the EU. Parliament is in direct confrontation with the people, while hypocritically pretending to respect their will.

Consider the attitude of the Commons majority. It is adamantly opposed to a so-called “no deal” Brexit – the sole outcome that corresponds to what Leavers voted for. The notion that people voted to leave, while desiring to stay in the Customs Union, or Single Market, or under the jurisdiction of the European Court is disingenuous humbug. People voted to leave on the clear assumption that they would be free of all EU institutions.

The propagandist terms “hard” and “soft” Brexit were only given currency after the referendum. The claim that people are better informed today than in 2016 is arrant nonsense: the reverse is the case, as the multifarious resources of the Remainer establishment have been mobilized over two and a half years to drown the public in disinformation.

It is a given that the one view that unites Leave and Remain voters is a desire to end the Brexit brawling and “get on with it” – yet MPs want to abolish the 29 March deadline and extend Article 50. Have they any idea of the fury that would provoke among the public? They agonize over a wholly imaginary Irish border “problem” and are desperate to present our persecutors in Brussels with £39bn of taxpayers’ money.

These people are wholly unrepresentative of this country and unfit to legislate for it. Yet over the next ten weeks they intend to wreck Britain’s hopes of resuming its status as a sovereign nation. It is impossible to envisage any situation that would better justify the prorogation of a parliament.

“This would be despotic,” was the response of Anne McElvoy, senior editor at the Economist, to Andrew Roberts’ suggestion. No, it would not: it would be a measure to prevent despotism. Real despotism is the prospect of the wishes of 17.4 million voters being smashed under John Bercow’s rogue gavel to accommodate the prejudices of 500 MPs. Their self-regarding mantras about “the privileges of this House” and the increasingly toxic doctrine that “Parliament is sovereign” need to be put out of commission permanently.

“The Queen in Parliament” is where sovereignty resides, not within a feral House of Commons divorced from its constituency; and even the true doctrine is a traditional gilding of the reality of the national will being the ultimate arbiter of sovereignty.

Predictably, when Sir Desmond Swayne raised the prorogation question with Theresa May the exchange was conducted in a flippant tone: “My right honourable friend is trying to tempt me down a road that I do not think I should go down.” It will be a fitting conclusion to Theresa May’s inglorious career if she watches impotently as constitutional anarchists in the Commons destroy Britain’s future, while having a perfectly adequate means of frustrating them at her disposal, unused.