LONDON: More than a million people have signed a petition against UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s decision to suspend the country’s Parliament in the second week of September, just weeks before the Brexit deadline on October 31.
By early Thursday, it had garnered over 1.2 million signatures and was increasing by around 1,000 per minute, ten times the amount required for the issue be debated in the House of Commons, the UK’s lower chamber of lawmaking, reports Efe news.
The petition says: “Parliament must not be prorogued or dissolved unless and until the Article 50 period has been sufficiently extended or the UK’s intention to withdraw from the EU has been cancelled.”
It came as thousands of people marched outside Westminster on Wednesday evening, just hours after Johnson announced he would suspend Parliament from mid-September, a week after MPs reconvene on September 3 following the summer recess, until October 14, when there would be a Queen’s Speech.
A Queen’s Speech is held when a new government wants to set out its legislative agenda, but the move was swiftly criticised by opposition politicians and rebel conservatives for its timing, coming just before the UK is slated to leave the European Union (EU) on October 31.
The suspension, authorised by Queen Elizabeth II, leaves little time for lawmakers to debate legislation to block a possible no-deal Brexit, an option Johnson has hung onto should his government fail to negotiate changes to the current withdrawal deal.
That deal, a hangover from former Prime Minister Theresa May’s government, was rejected three times by MPs in the Commons.
The official Conservative Party government line is that it is normal to hold a Queen’s Speech when a freshly formed executive wants to set out its programme and that MPs would have time to vote on Brexit once Johnson returns from a European Council meeting scheduled for October 17-18.
John Bercow, the Speaker of the House of Commons who normally remains impartial on the politics of parliamentary matters, on Wednesday described the move as a “constitutional outrage”.
With just 64 days until Brexit, talks between the UK and the EU’s negotiating teams have stalled. (IANS)
