Section:GDN 1N PaGe:8 Edition Date:190831 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 30/8/2019 19:03 cYanmaGentaYellowbl
- The Guardian Sat urday 31 Aug ust 2019
(^8) National
Politics
Rebel MPs ready themselves for
battle to prevent no-deal Brexit
Jessica Elgot
Heather Stewart
Cross-party rebel MPs yesterday said
they had new optimism that measures
to stop a no-deal Brexit could pass both
the Commons and the Lords before
parliament is prorogued, as Labour’s
Tom Watson confi rmed a potential bill
had been drafted.
Sir Oliver Letwin , one of the lead-
ing Conservative architects behind the
plans , has said those opposing no deal
do still have time to pass legislation
aimed at preventing it.
However, MPs from diff erent par-
ties are believed to be still at odds
over how to stop Boris Johnson from
circumventing any new law – and cru-
cially what the aim of any extension
to article 50 should be, whether that
be extra time for negotiations, a sec-
ond referendum or a general election.
Watson, who announced yester-
day he was joining a legal challenge
to stop the prorogation of parliament,
said concrete plans were now in place.
“I have taken advice on legislative
solutions to challenge the prime min-
ister’s action to stop us crashing out of
the EU without a deal,” he said. “I am
in discussion with colleagues in other
parties and a bill to achieve this out-
come has been drafted.”
Letwin, who led eff orts to stop no
deal earlier this year by passing a bill
with the Labour MP Yvette Cooper,
said “there probably is time” to get
a measure to block a no-deal Brexit
through parliament, which would
involve MPs seizing control of the
order paper to pass the bill in a matter
of days.
Opposition peers expect Tories in
the Lords to attempt to fi libuster the
legislation, which will need to have
passed through all its parliamentary
stages and received royal assent before
parliament is suspended or it will fall.
The party’s leader in the Lords,
Angela Smith, has been taking advice
on procedural mechanisms for ensur-
ing the government cannot prevent
peers from sitting for as long as it takes
to get the bill through. Labour peers
have been put on a three-line whip for
Wednesday to Friday next week.
A Labour source : “If the Commons
does pass the bill, the government
should be in no doubt that the Lords
will do all it can to protect the will of
the elected house.”
In the Commons, a number of prom-
inent Conservative MPs, including
the former cabinet ministers Philip
Hammond, David Gauke and Rory
Stewart, have indicated they will
back the eff orts next week but Letwin
said he was not complacent about
numbers.
“ We will just have to see whether we
can acquire a majority of the required
kind,” he said yesterday.
A senior MP close to the rebels’ dis-
cussions said all eff orts would be on
passing a bill forcing the government
to request an extension, but there
were still question marks over how
long an extension should be and for
what purpose.
“Labour and the frontbench want a
general election, soft-Brexit Tories like
Letwin don’t want either a people’s
vote or a general election and a sig-
nifi cant number of the [parliamentary
Labour party] won’t vote for a referen-
dum either,” the MP said.
“If the legislation is vague, as it was
in the Cooper bill in April – where the
extension length was unspecifi ed –
Boris could simply ask for another six
hours’ extension and satisfy the legal
requirement.”
Letwin denied reports that the
House of Commons Speaker, John Ber-
cow, had broken off his family holiday
to discuss “cooking up plans” with him
to stop parliament being prorogued
but said the pair had been in contact.
“There’s no question of any MP
cooking up any deal with the Speaker.
You cannot do that. The Speaker has
to follow the rules,” he told BBC Radio
4’s Today programme.
But he added: “I have talked to the
Speaker and the clerks on many occa-
sions and will continue to do so.”
Yesterday, Johnson warned MPs
that eff orts to stop no deal were det-
rimental to his attempts to secure
concessions from the EU. “I’m afraid
that the more our friends and partners
think at the back of their minds that
Brexit could be stopped, that the UK
could be kept in, by parliament, the
less likely they are to give us the deal
that we need,” he said.
“And so that’s why I really hope that
MPs will allow the UK to do a deal and
to get ready for a no-deal Brexit – and
that’s the best way forward for our
country.”
EU offi cials remain concerned that
the UK has so far presented no concrete
proposals for replacing the backstop
- the insurance policy for avoiding a
hard border in Ireland, which John-
son has described as undemocratic.
Johnson hopes to strike a deal at a
key meeting of the European council
on 17 October, and will then give MPs
the chance to vote on it the following
week, just days before the Hallow-
een Brexit deadline. He insisted they
would have “a lot of time” to debate
the issues.
“We’re coming up to the last period
before we leave on 31 October, and in
that period, parliament is going to have
a lot of time, still – and they’ve spent
three years debating Brexit by the
way, without actually getting it over
the line,” Johnson said.
“They’re going to have a lot of time
for consideration, and what I want to
do now, which I think is what most
people in the country want the gov-
ernment to do, is get on and try and
get an agreement, but if we can’t get
an agreement, get ready to come out
anyway.”
Journal John Harris Page 1 ▼ Boris Johnson takes questions from
children during an announcement on
education at Downing Street
PHOTOGRAPH: JEREMY SELWYN/PA▲ Labour’s Tom Watson confi rmed a
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