Keep the Queen out of Brexit as Parliamentary crisis deepens

Keep the Queen out of Brexit as Parliamentary crisis deepens – The Yorkshire Post says

EVEN by the standards of Brexit, this has been an extraordinary week. The timing of Parliament’s prolonged suspension at a time of national crisis; a Speaker siding with Westminster’s Remain Alliance and now a former prime minister asking the courts to take action against his own party’s government.

Boris Johnson has caused controversy after asking the Queen to suspend Parliament within a month of becoming PM.

Yet these fast-moving developments – and many more – could begin to look very ordinary in a week’s time judging by the emergency debates, no confidence motions and ever more pedantic points of procedure which will only serve to bring Parliament – and politics – into even more disrepute.

No one voted to silence Parliament over Brexit – York MP Rachael Maskell

The fact that no one – not even the Prime Minister, Opposition Leader, Speaker or any constitutional historian of note – can predict the outcome of next week’s events, and Brexit per se, with any degree of certainty tells its own story.

Politics has become even more inflammatory following the murder of Jo Cox MP three years ago.

Nothing unconstitutional about Boris Johnson shutting Parliament over Brexit and here’s why – Bill Carmichael

Given this, Ministers and MPs face three specific challenges. The first is to keep the Queen out of politics after she was effectively drawn into Brexit when she was asked to consent to the suspension of Parliament. Her Majesty – just like her subjects – deserves better.

‘Government of national unity’ is nothing less than a Brexit coup – Yorkshire Post letters

The second is to moderate the tone of a debate and discussion that has, once again, become too inflammatory for it own good. No politician should need to be reminded of the promises they made to moderate their language in the aftermath of the murder of Jo Cox MP in 2016.

Anti-Brexit supporters gather outside Parliament.

Finally, Brexit – and the path chosen – should not be a matter for the courts. Westminster prides itself on being a representative democracy in which 650 MPs have the responsibility of taking decisions on behalf of their constituents.

Now most contentious issue since the Second World War, MPs should, therefore, sit for as long as it takes – and regardless of any time constraints posed by prorogation – until a way forward is agreed. It is what voters – and, quite probably, the Queen – expect of them.