Worst Hot Take of the Week: The Queen Actually Letting Boris Suspend Parliament

Welcome to The Worst Take of the Week – a weekly column in which NEO, AKA @MULLET_FAN NEO, pits two of the wildest takes the world's great thinkers have rustled up against each other.

What's the story? Boris Johnson seeks to push through Brexit and side-step democracy by asking the Queen to prorogue Parliament for political gain.
Reasonable take: A Prime Minister suspending the political system so they can potentially execute a no-deal Brexit is deeply undemocratic.
Brain rot: Mummy, can you suspend democracy for me? I want to go hard Brexit! – Boris, PM.

This week Boris Johnson made some enormous goose steps towards a hard Brexit by using prorogation, a process to end the sitting of a parliamentary session without dissolving it, allowing Boris and the fuck-around boys to potentially carry out actions without interference from MPs.

If opponents of a hard Brexit attempt to bring in legislation to stop a no-deal, they would need time to debate it and pass it, but with parliament prorogued – even if the opposition managed to bring a vote – there might not be enough time to get the law enacted. And so the legislation would fail, with parliament essentially shut down for six of the scant weeks left before one of the most significant events of our lifetime. It's like the political equivalent of sticking your iPhone on airplane mode down the pub when your missus is nine months pregnant.

Various critics of the prorogation pointed out that, just recently, Boris Johnson wrote a letter to fellow Conservative MPs seeking their support during the Tory leadership election, stating: “I would like to make it absolutely clear that that I am not attracted to arcane procedures such as the prorogation of Parliament” and that as “someone who aspires to be Prime Minister in a democratic nation, I believe in finding consensus in the House of Commons”.

Boris said it was “completely untrue” that closing down all parliamentary scrutiny for as long as possible was nothing to do with Brexit, and according to Jacob Rees-Mogg, what they are doing is “routine” and “actually quite boring”.

So now it seems we have to live in a Tory Britain where an unelected tinpot despot with a minority government is just going to use lawful manoeuvres to vanquish politics into the ether, so the elite can strangle the final ebbs out of the British public forevermore. Good stuff.

What's the story? Boris Johnson seeks to push through Brexit and side-step democracy by asking the Queen to prorogue Parliament for political gain.
Reasonable take: Our Head of State probably shouldn’t be agreeing to suspend politics so Boris can execute a potential no-deal Brexit.
Brain rot: “Democracy? Don’t care for it personally!” – HM, The Queen.

All that said, The Queen fucking approved the order for parliament to be “prorogued” from the second week in September until the 14th of October – a critical 17 days before the scheduled date of our Spooky Halloween Brexit Nightmare. Despite letters from both Jeremy Corbyn and leader of Liberal Democrats Jo Swinson requesting urgent meetings to urge The Queen to withhold it, approval was given at a session of the Privy Council in Balmoral.

BBC royal correspondent Jonny Dymond stated that it is established precedent to prorogue Parliament before a Queen's Speech, but rarely, at such a constitutionally and politically charged time, saying it’s ‘Her Majesty's Government’ in “name only” and it was her role to take the advice of her ministers. Conservative former Prime Minister Sir John Major however, said he is seeking advice on the legality of the move, saying he had “no doubt” Boris Johnson’s motive was “to bypass a sovereign parliament that opposes his policy on Brexit”.

This constitutional quagmire we find ourselves in isn’t helped by the fact it’s based on the UK’s system of “responsible government”. It seems that an unwritten constitution, which can give unchecked power to people like Boris Johnson and a system that relies solely on politicians not being cunning, untrustworthy cunts… might not work? “If only we wrote down it all down” you’ll be saying about the constitution during the “the rationing years” after the Tories rail-road us into an undemocratic no deal Brexit while you nurse your wounds from a knife fight over who gets to suck the brine from the last tin of tuna left in Camberley.

I guess this is where having a written constitution, like most countries in the world, would come in handy – so a document exists setting out the structure of government and its relationship to the people of the UK, as opposed to relying on a 93-year-old woman from a historically inbred family, who lives exclusively in palaces and castles.

This whole mess perfectly exemplifies why having a “constitutional” Head of State – yes, this is a constitutional monarchy! – offers no scrutiny or balance. It sounds like the sort medieval intrigue that cunt George RR Martin would write about in one of his books.

Winner: Boris cancelling democracy is very good, but the Queen so often painted as some shade-throwing woke Monarch by British liberals okaying the whole thing wins for me. Touché, Ma'am.

@MULLET_FAN_NEO