Today the privy council, a group of politicians who advise the Monarch, have met with the Queen in Balmoral to ask for her permission to suspend Parliament. The current plan is to extend party conference recess until the 14th of October.
After MPs come back from summer break at the start of September, they usually have a couple of weeks in Westminster before they break again for the party conference season in the middle of the month. Normally they return the start of October but the government are asking the Queen to extend this, leaving just two weeks before the UK is due to leave the EU on the 31st October.
Some people think suspending Parliament is good because it gives the Prime Minister and his cabinet the chance to get on with Brexit without MPs raising legal disputes and trying to extend the Brexit deadline. Suspending Parliament until the 14th would allow just enough time for a final vote on a reworked deal ahead of a big meeting with the European Council on the 17th October.
Or, another way to look at it is that MPs are being placed in between a rock and a hard place. They either vote through the reworked deal, or they force the country into a no-deal Brexit. For a lot of people, this doesn’t seem very democratic or fair.
Read more about what a no-deal Brexit could mean for your money here.
Some political experts are saying this announcement is a real “win-win scenario” for the government. If the Queen agrees to suspend Parliament, there is a high chance of seeing through Brexit on the 31st. But if she doesn’t, the government is in a good position to announce a general election and harness support from Brexit voters with a “people vs parliament” narrative.
What do you think about the plan to suspend Parliament? Is it a savvy idea to help the government see through the referendum vote? Or is it a sneaky plan to disempower our elected officials who are there to represent our views and interests?
Rowan Pereira is Head of Growth at Multiply, she’s really interested in how politics and current affairs directly affect the money in our pockets.
