The political impasse over Brexit continued to be a rich mine to seam for yesterday’s opinion pages. Papers had starkly different views over the suspension of Parliament, described as “a step towards dicatorship” by one, while another said it did “not amount to political censorship”.
The Times
The leader argues that “disgraceful” late-night behaviour by MPs in the House of Commons and the controversy over Theresa May’s honours list are bringing parliamentarians into “further disrepute” with the public.
Before Scottish appeal court judges declared Boris Johnson’s decision to suspend Parliament in the run-up to the October Brexit deadline is unlawful, the Times described as “hysterical” claims the suspension of Parliament is a coup.
“Democracy is not in peril and prorogation does not amount to political censorship,” the leader stated.
It added: “One of many reasons that Britain voted to leave the EU in 2016 was disillusionment with party politics. There was a strong sense, hard to specify but palpable, that a privileged elite was carrying on with its games, ever more distant from the daily concerns of the public. While this is harsh on many well-meaning parliamentarians, it would be complacent to deny that there is a deficit of trust. In a parliamentary democracy, trust is a precious commodity and it is being forfeited by the self-indulgent and unpleasant behaviour of many MPs. They appear only to be listening to each other (and then not always) and ignoring the outside world.”
It said the “juvenile floorshow” in the early hours where MPs brandished placards, on which they had scribbled “silenced”, and the “partisan bickering” every Wednesday at Prime Minister’s Questions are the “visible exhibits of a Parliament that has lost its sense of decorum”.
The Scotsman
By contrast, the Scotsman’s leader viewed that the suspension of Parliament was “a step towards a dicatorship”, while aimed at getting opposition MPs out of the way for as long “as was deemed politically possible” in the midst of the continuing arguments over Brexit.
Opposition politicians were right to show their displeasure, it argued, but changes to our constitution were required in the wake of the House of Commons uproar.
“Whoever is prime minister when British politics finally achieves some semblance of normality – surely, this will happen eventually – should set up a commission to consider reform of the UK’s rather piecemeal constitution, which is not entirely unwritten, but a mix of various bits of legislation, tradition and expected practice,” the leader stated. This might result in a written constitution. Perhaps it could even produce an inspirational document that would echo down the centuries in the same way as the US Declaration of Independence’s ‘self-evident’ truths about equality and ‘unalienable rights’, including ‘Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness’, have done.
“But, for now, we would settle for a guarantee that Parliament will never be suspended in this disgraceful manner ever again.”
The Daily Telegraph
The newspaper’s leader compared the “Marxist” Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn to former miners union leader Arthur Scargill when at the TUC conference in Brighton he promised to “put power in the hands of workers”.
“In the House of Commons, Labour MPs sang the Red Flag, just as they did in 1976 on the famous night when the Callaghan government pushed through legislation to nationalise the aircraft and shipbuilding industries,” said the commentary.
“This is a Labour Party which, according to the latest opinion polls, has the support of less than one quarter of the electorate.”
The Independent
The actions of Jo Swinson, the new Liberal Democrat leader, came under the microscope by the paper’s editorial, which argued she is “pushing her luck” by pursuing a position of revoking Article 50 and not just “stopping Brexit”.
The “fundamental objection” to the approach is that “it is extreme and undemocratic” and the democratic vote “cannot be wished away”, it said.
Ms Swinson’s had “rubbished” the appointment of Jeremy Corbyn as leader of an interim government tasked with ending the Brexit crisis – “and arrogantly too”, it said.
As leader of the opposition and leading a Commons group roughly 15 times larger than Ms Swinson’s, it was Mr Corbyn’s “constitutional right” to attempt to form an administration.
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