September 1 • 2019 The Mail on Sunday^By jacob rees-mogg
Leader of the house of CommonsHe loves high stakes... now he’s betting the House
ister Crispin Blunt to say: ‘Many of us will now
have an unshakeable conviction that the referee
of our affairs... is no longer neutral.’
Last night, one senior Minister told The Mail
on Sunday that he suspected that so great were
the Speaker’s Remainer convictions, that he
himself fancied taking on the role of interim
PM if Mr Johnson was forced out.
But allies of the Speaker branded the idea
‘absurd’ and claimed the Government was
simply trying to smear Mr Bercow ahead of this
week’s showdowns.
Mr Johnson has defended his decision to
prorogue Parliament, saying that ‘the more the
parliamentarians try to block the No Deal
Brexit, the more likely it is that we’ll end up in
that situation’.
Asked whether the Speaker did intend to stand
at the next Election, Mr Bercow’s spokeswoman
said that he would tell the Commons ‘in
the event he has anything to say on his
future plans’.11
Boris allies
bid to topple
‘saboteur’
Bercow
T
hE next two weeks will shape
the country’s future. If MPs
honour the instruction they
were given, and support the
Government in its negotia-
tions, the Government will be
able to complete its mission of
leaving the EU and embarking on an excit-
ing new domestic agenda next month. If
not, the parliamentary diadem that adorns
the nation’s brow will be in peril.
The stakes are unquestionably high. In
the United Kingdom, parliamentary democ-
racy rests on a simple premise: power lies
with the people. That is reinforced when
Parliament asks the people directly to make
a decision.
The EU Referendum Act was passed by a
ratio of six to one in the Commons. That Act
deliberately and unambiguously gave
responsibility for the final decision on our
membership of the EU to the British people
and promised to honour the vote. More than
1 7 million people then voted to leave the EU
so that, as the Prime Minister has said, laws
would be made ‘by people who they can
elect and they can remove from office’.
It is more than three years on from that
historic vote. Parliamentarians have so far
failed to deliver on the promises made to
the people. It has become a grievous test of
their patience.
Some in both houses of Parliament have
sought to stretch and strain the elastic of
our constitution to pursue their goal of
remaining in the EU. Twice already they
have chosen to prolong and delay our depar-
ture and refuse the instruction.
The rumour is they now plan to do so again
and seek a further six months of delay and
confusion for the UK until May 2020.D
ELIvERING the referendum
in practice requires MPs to ful-
fil their roles within the house
of Commons properly. This
applies particularly to the
Speaker, who is bound by a
requirement to represent the
whole house of Commons, and by implica-
tion the whole of the UK, not a single view
of their choosing. As the Speaker during
the English Civil War period, William
Lenthall said: ‘I have neither eye to see, nor
tongue to speak here, but as the house is
pleased to direct me.’
The Speaker is rightly the champion of
the Commons within the conventions and
precedents that sets its place in the consti-
tutional firmament.
The way Britain is governed was not
dreamt up in a day but has evolved and
developed over a thousand years. The com-
plementary and distinctive roles played by
Government on one hand and the Parlia-
ment on the other are essential. Indeed, the
interplay between the executive and the
legislature is a matter of careful balance.
To damage it is to harm the fabric of the
nation. It is the Government, as elected by
the people and commanding the confidence
of the Commons, which sets the agenda for
the house.
It is for Parliament to scrutinise, to amend,
to reject or to approve. It is not for Parlia-
ment to mimic, replace or take over the
functions of the Government.
The Government of the day must be
allowed to deliver on the manifesto it put to
the people and on the back of which it was
elected alternatively.
If MPs disagree, it may be ejected by the
loss of a confidence vote and a new one put
in its place. The country’s uncodified con-
stitution has considerable flexibility tomeet changing circumstances based on
clear principles.
In the past decade, for example, govern-
ments have been sustained by coalition and
by an agreement assuring support on mat-
ters of confidence and supply.
After the 2015 General Election, it allowed
an administration with a small majority to
set the terms of a decisive referendum on
the UK’s EU membership, giving the public
the opportunity to take back control.
Perhaps this was also partly why in 2015
the Conservatives were returned to Gov-
ernment with more votes and MPs in the
first place.
For nine months, the normal Commons
conventions have been arbitrarily over-
turned to frustrate the UK’s departure from
the EU. There are apparently plots to take
over the order paper this week, which risk
torpedoing the Chancellor’s spending
review, expected on Wednesday. This would
be a grave misuse of parliamentary power.
The Chancellor has made clear it will
focus on voters’ priorities – schools, educa-
tion, health and the police – and it may be
unwise for the Commons to stand in the
way of the recruitment of 20,000 morepolice officers, or to prevent more than
£ 1 4 billion being committed to our schools.
Such politicking may be unforgivable in
the eyes of the public, but it is also uncon-
stitutional because the opponents of Brexit
have another route that they are too fright-
ened to use.
They dare not use the confidence proce-
dures because they know that Jeremy Cor-
byn is too unpopular and, therefore, they
seek deceitful ends by underhand means.
It is now time to end this paralysis in the
two chambers and allow the new Prime
Minister, with all his natural vim and vig-
our, to bring this chapter in our island story
to a conclusion next month.
The prize that awaits is the return of the
country to its status as a sovereign nation,
free to chart its own course. The Prime Min-
ister has made clear where he wishes to lead
us. With more resources to the NhS, new
powers to tackle knife crime, fresh invest-
ment in science and technology, and bold
measures to boost living standards, this
Government is poised to reap the benefits of
Brexit for which the nation voted.
The people expect nothing less, and power,
Speaker could find himself on the losing side, the fount of sovereignty, flows from them.
with the Election result being a Boris Johnson
administration with a majority.
Surely even Mr Bercow must recognise that
he cannot change the role of Speaker from
impartial referee to partisan player-manager
by executive order. As powerful as he is, these
are major constitutional changes that need the
agreement of all those concerned.
Mr Speaker has always liked to play high
stakes but this week he will be betting the
house. If he wins, he succeeds in delaying
Brexit to another day. If not, he could lose
everything and be blamed by both Leavers
and Remainers for changing the rules on
something that – for both sides – is really
not a game.l Natascha Engel is the former Labour MP
for North-East Derbyshire and now a partner
with the Public First consultancyJolley
FEELING THE HEAT: The Speaker enraged Tory
loyalists by intervening from a break in Turkey, aboveThe people
will never
forgive
Remain
plotters if
they don’t
back down
As Mr Speaker schemes from his
sunbed, Tory chiefs urged to field
Election candidate against him
Marxist past of PM aide
ONE of the architects of the
bombshell plan to prorogue Par-
liament was a former student
communist whose husband used
to run high-class sex parties.
Munira Mirza, the head of
Downing Street’s policy unit, was
part of the five-strong clique of
advisers who plotted Wednes-
day’s historic coup de theatre
behind the doors of No 10.
The daughter of Pakistani
immigrants, Ms Mirza grew
up in Oldham, went to a compre-hensive school and then to
Oxford University.
The other advisers in on the
secret were Dominic Cum-
mings, the Prime Minister’s
chief strategist; Sir Edward
Lister, Mr Johnson’s chief of
staff; Lee Cain, his communica-
tions secretary; and Nikki da
Costa, his constitutional expert.
As a student, Ms Mirza was a
member of what friends
describe as a ‘successor off-
shoot’ of the disbanded Revolu-tionary Communist Party. her
husband Dougie Smith is a
former speechwriter for David
Cameron. Until moving into
Tory politics in 2003, Mr Smith
ran Fever Parties, an agency
which organised sex parties for
up to 50 couples at a time from
London’s ‘fast set’.
very few Ministers knew of the
plans to suspend Parliament.
Those in the know included
Chancellor Sajid Javid and Attor-
ney General Geoffrey Cox.