THE current UK Parliament is “dead as dead can be,” Geoffrey Cox, the Attorney General, has told MPs, as he let slip that Boris Johnson will try a third time to trigger a General Election.

As MPs resumed their seats on Westminster's green benches following the annulment by the UK Supreme Court of the suspension of Parliament, Mr Cox appeared to set up Mr Johnson’s line for later today when he makes a Commons statement by branding Parliament a “disgrace” for not supporting a fresh poll.

Mr Cox pointed out how the Commons had three times blocked Theresa May’s bid to get her deal through, was blocking the prospect of a no-deal and denying the public a say on how the matter should be resolved with an election.

"This Parliament is a dead Parliament, it should no longer sit. It has no moral right to sit on these green benches," declared the Government’s chief legal officer.

He branded the Labour Opposition “too cowardly” to put down a no-confidence motion in the Government and face the electorate.

“It won't, because so many of them are really all about preventing us leaving the European Union but the time is coming, the time is coming, Mr Speaker, when even these turkeys won't be able to prevent Christmas."

The opposition parties have stayed their hand on tabling a no-confidence vote because they still believe they do not have the numbers to win it and want the extension to Brexit to be legally watertight before they try to pull the trigger on an election.

During combative exchanges, Mr Cox appeared to let slip the announcement of the Government’s next move when he told the SNP’s Patricia Gibson: "Can I encourage her then to vote for the election motion that will be coming before the House shortly?"

He added: “The time has come for a General Election and to resist it is immoral, unparliamentary and undemocratic."

Earlier, the Attorney General insisted that the Government had acted “in good faith,” believing its action was lawful and constitutional but accepted the court’s judgement and had lost the case.

But he noted: “These are complex matters on which senior and distinguished lawyers will disagree. The divisional court, led by the Lord Chief Justice, as well as Lord Doherty in the Outer House of Scotland agreed with the Government’s position but we were disappointed that, in the end, the Supreme Court took a different view. Of course, we respect its judgement.”

But Nick Thomas-Symonds, the Shadow Attorney General, declared: “This Government stands in shame, tendering illegal advice to our monarch and not even able to uphold that most basic and important of principles: abiding by the rule of law.”

The MP for Torfaen pointed out how the Government had been found in contempt of Parliament and now found in contempt of the law, insisting it did “not have a shred of credibility left”.

Mr Cox hit back, saying: “It is the most puerile and infantile of criticisms to say about a lawyer whose advice has been upheld by courts right the way up to the Supreme Court that somehow or other he should be held culpable for that advice.

“The fact of the matter is that this advice was sound advice at the time. The court of last resort ultimately disagreed with it…”

He went on to suggest the Government could publish his legal advice on which its position to prorogue Parliament was based; which would be a highly unusual move.

During an Urgent Question in the Commons, called for by the SNP’s Joanna Cherry, he said: “I am bound by the long-standing convention that the views of the law officers are not disclosed outside the Government without their consent.

"However, I will consider over the coming days whether the public interest might require a greater disclosure of the advice given to the Government on this subject."

Ms Cherry said yesterday was a “very special day for Scots law and the Scottish legal tradition going back to the declaration of Arbroath; that the Government are not above the law”.

The SNP’s Home Affairs spokeswoman said she was interested in how Mr Cox's legal advice was ever allowed to happen given the UK Supreme Court had declared it unlawful, null and void.

She referred to how leaked documents revealed the Attorney General had said the “advice to prorogue was lawful and that anyone who said otherwise was doing so for political reasons”.

Mr Cox simply replied that the issue of disclosing more of the Government’s legal advice was “under consideration”.

But Jeremy Wright, the previous Attorney General, warned about disclosure, saying: “If those who ask for it to be published get their way, that legal advice will become increasingly guarded, increasingly equivocal and progressively less useful to Government in ministerial decision making; and the consequence of that will be less good legal advice and less good ministerial decision making.”

Outwith Parliament, it had been suggested that Jacob Rees-Mogg, the Commons Leader, sitting beside the Attorney General during his statement, had earlier told Cabinet colleagues during a conference call that the Supreme Court’s decision amounted to a “constitutional coup”.

When pressed on this point by Labour’s Hilary Benn, Mr Cox told MPs: “I do not think that it was a constitutional coup. I know he will know that I do not and I do not believe that anybody does.”

But in his response the Attorney General did not disabuse MPs that Mr Rees-Mogg had indeed expressed the sentiment attributed to him.

The Attorney General went on: “These things can be said in the heat of rhetorical and poetical licence but this was a judgement of the Supreme Court of a kind that was clear and definitive. It often happens that Governments lose cases. We did not agree with it because, of course, we argued against it, but we accept the ruling of the Supreme Court and we are proud that we have a country that is capable of giving independent judgements of this kind.”