The fact that I have been building up day-by-day a schedule of how we got here, a post that will now have to be scrapped or at best postponed, is annoying but not the most serious of my concerns. Mrs May scuttling out of a meaningful vote on her deal with the EU27, simply to save her face and that of the Conservative time-servers who have clung to her in the cabinet, is an affront to democracy. Hundreds of MPs last week sat through hours of passionate and informed argument about our future relationship with the EU - and that was on top of two sessions on the nature of legal advice to the PM over her deal. Over one hundred speeches - many of high quality, showing hours of preparation - were delivered, not to mention several telling interventions.
All that is to be virtually thrown away. That time wasted could have been spent usefully on examining the difficulties facing the country: homelessness, police and local authorities being starved of funds, the troubles of the retail sector, the plight of the working poor and the legal aid desert come to mind. As the chairman of the Backbench Business Committee said last Thursday:
by next Thursday it will have been eight weeks since we had any Backbench Business in the House, and I am pretty sure that when the Committee was established, the Standing Orders were written with the intention that the 27 days of parliamentary time would be over a one-year Session, not over two years. I remain disappointed that we are not getting any additional time, or notification of additional time
We have been told that the aim of Mrs May and her Brexiteers is to regain parliamentary sovereignty. Her true aim is clearly to strengthen the grip of the administration over parliament.
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