Quote:
Originally Posted by Chris
Is he though? A Queen’s Speech after a session lasting, say, six months, would be an abuse of process, but the current session is now more than 2 years old, and apparently the oldest in centuries. He is entirely within his rights to use his power to advise the Queen in order to control parliamentary business. That’s what governments do and it’s an essential part of the balance of power that emerged after the English Civil War period. Parliament is sovereign; its legislation (or respect for convention) permits the government to function. A monarch with powers constitutionally limited was agreed in 1660 to be preferable to a “Lord Protector” whose powers and influence had no such agreed limit. Well, here we are in 2020 and the monarch is exercising her powers in accordance with the longstanding will of parliament. So far as I can see, Boris’ behaviour here is no worse than the way MPs took over government business in the Commons before the summer and announced they would do again next month
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He is within his rights to do so. I am not especially outraged by the whole thing because if you have a tool at your disposal then you might as well use it. I wasn't outraged by Parliament looking to take control of the order paper either. Really the only time I felt someone behaved
really badly is when the Government 'accidentally' broke pairing for a Labour MP on maternity leave in a close vote.
I just think it's a cynical ploy and Parliament needs to see what it can do to respond. The rest of it is just whining at the referee.
---------- Post added at 12:37 ---------- Previous post was at 12:34 ----------
BTW So many of these problems are because of the Fixed Term Parliament act. That needs to go ASAP.