THE Scottish National Party will today ask the Commons Speaker John Bercow to declare it Her Majesty's official oppositon at Westminster in light of Labour's parliamentary meltdown.
Party sources say their leader Angus Robertson now enjoys more support than Jeremy Corbyn given there are 54 SNP MPs but only 40 Labour MPs, who support the Labour leader.
It is expected Mr Robertson will make the request in a point of order following today's Prime Minister's Questions.
The sources stress the SNP is able to fill all the relevant shadow posts to the government unlike Mr Corbyn, who still, amid the rash of resignations this week, still has to appoint people to his frontline team. There is still, for example, no shadow Scottish team.
The Nationalist sources point to parliamentary rules, which say the official opposition must be "prepared to assume power."
"We have looked at Erskine May[the Parliamentary rule book] and will put it to the Speaker that the Labour Party no longer meet obligations to remain as the official opposition," said one senior SNP figure.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel