Boris Wanted MPs to Pass Brexit in Three Days – That's Impossible

Earlier this week, the bullish forces of Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s front bench were, as if in a rugby scrum on the grounds of a £30,000-a-term private school, using all their might to force through the Withdrawal Agreement Bill (WAB) to leave the EU.

Running to 110 pages long with 125 pages of notes, the bill was, according to the PM, to be read, scrutinised, debated and assessed in just three days in the commons. On Tuesday, the WAB passed thanks to 19 Labour MPs who defied the whip to vote for it. However, MPs rejected Johnson's proposed timetable to push all of it through in just three days.

As Novara Media contributing editor Ash Sarkar points out on Twitter, it takes about a month for even the most average and sensible bill to make it past the scrutiny of MPs. So VICE thought of looking at how plenty of other laws – either completely obvious interventions or totally bizarre notions – took far longer than Johnson's three-day request.

It’s 1985. "Raspberry Beret" is in the charts, The Breakfast Club is in cinemas and Tim Westwood is a fully grown adult. It is a thoroughly modern world in many ways. Yet it still took Parliament a total of four months to pass a bill that would make sure no-one was still trying to sell any sort of product by the bushel, chain, cubic inch, foot, yard, dram, furlong, grain, short/long hundredweight, square mile, apothecary’s ounce (??) , peck, pennyweight, quarter, quintal, rood, scruple, stone, short/long ton.

Though any legislation allowing for the state to take someone’s child away should be taken very seriously, glue is so nasty even Pete Doherty wouldn’t do it. But it still took three months to pass the very obvious law that meant that huffing glue would be considered, alongside taking other illicit drugs, as indicators a person's child might need to be taken into care.

In order to stop bees, which are capable of flight, from coming into contact with other bees (which are also capable of flight) and passing on diseases, there is a law to stop people transporting bees around the UK. It still took six months for MPs to make this a thing.

Osteopaths are practitioners who can crack your neck and back at thunderous decibels. The sweet release of feeling air pop from between your bones is nothing compared to the relief of knowing that the person contorting you hasn’t actually killed you. It makes sense these practitioners should be regulated. It still took seven months for MPs to go for it.

Dog shit is almost as hard to shift as Brexit. And it should be a given that every person who owns a dog – which is basically a cat without the smarts to bury its own poo – cleans up after it. But it still took two months for MPs to put it in law.

During the 1888 matchgirls strike, women protested having to eat near white phosphorous, an ingredient in the easy-strike matches that necrotised workers’ faces till their jaws and mouths and faces started rotting and falling off. Exactly 30 years later, it took MPs six months to make sure its import to India – then still a colony of the UK – was banned.

The founding of the Met involved about 11 sittings, but four days of debate were necessary for the creation of associated laws that included the banning of carrying a plank on the pavement, flying kites, playing annoying games, sliding on ice or snow on the street, keeping a pigsty in front of your house, slaughtering cattle in the street, erecting a washing line across the street, singing profane or obscene songs or ballads in the street and wilfully and wantonly disturbing people by ringing their doorbells or knocking at their doors. It also banned the beating or shaking of any rug, carpet or mat in any street in the Met’s district after 8 AM.

Even the most obvious and absurd laws take longer than three days to be thrashed out and debated. Putting a bill that aims to sever the UK from the EU – a political and economic union it has been enmeshed with for 40 years – is surely Johnson putting party before country.

“Legislation that is perceived to be needed urgently can be taken through within a couple of days, especially if it isn’t very contentious; at other times, bills that are long or complex, or of major significance, would generally be expected to take longer," says Dr Alice Lilly, a senior researcher at the Institute for Government, a think tank working to make government more effective.

“Spending more time on a bill doesn’t necessarily mean better scrutiny. But having more time to spend on a bill at least creates the opportunity for greater scrutiny, and gives MPs time to identify any potential problems with a piece of legislation.”

She adds: “Rushing a bill through, particularly where it is complicated, or makes major changes to current policy, does run the risk of problems being missed—which could potentially mean that a government would need to legislate again later on to fix any issues.”

Brb, we’re off to scream some profane obscenities in the street.

@sophwilkinson