Queen approves UK’s Johnson plan to suspend parliament

Bloomberg

Queen Elizabeth II approved Boris Johnson’s request to suspend parliament for almost five weeks ahead of Brexit. The prime minister’s move sets up a showdown with lawmakers who want to block him from taking the UK out of the European Union without a deal. The pound fell.
Privy Council said Queen approved Johnson’s request to prorogue — suspend — parliament. Johnson’s office said suspension would last from September 12 until a Queen’s Speech on October 14.
PM said government will put forward “very exciting” domestic agenda, MPs will have “ample time” to debate Brexit. Johnson said he’s not preparing for a general election. Timetable puts Queen’s Speech days before key EU summit.
The backstop is “currently” the only viable solution to the post-Brexit border issue, Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney said at a conference in Paris. While the withdrawal agreement can’t be renegotiated, Coveney said it is too late anyway to do so ahead of the October 31 deadline for the UK to leave.
“Even if we wanted to do that, which we don’t, we can’t do it in six or 10 weeks,” he said. While the EU is open to exploring alternative arrangements, they must achieve the same objectives as the backstop, he said.
The EU regards the backstop, a fallback mechanism meant to keep the Irish border free of checks after Brexit, as vital to protecting its single market and ensuring the peace process in Northern Ireland isn’t jeopardised.
But it’s despised by Brexiteers, who say it will keep the UK tied to the bloc long after it’s supposed to have left.
The Queen approved Boris Johnson’s request for parliament to be suspended “on a day no earlier than September 09 and no later than September 12 to October 14.”
The privy council — senior politicians who advise the monarch — issued a statement saying the Queen had given her approval after she met with Leader of the House of Commons Jacob Rees-Mogg, Chief Whip Mark Spencer and Leader of the House of Lords Natalie Evans at her holiday home in Scotland.
A no-deal Brexit is the worst case for British companies and they’ve been warning against it for years. The Confederation of British Industry said only a deal could protect the economy. Bloomberg Economics analyst Dan Hanson said a disruptive break could cause a recession.
US President Donald Trump weighed in on British politics again, saying it would be “very hard” for Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn to call a vote of confidence in Boris Johnson’s government. “Boris is exactly what the UK has been looking for,” Trump said on Twitter.
Corbyn accused Johnson of running “headlong into the arms of Donald Trump with more determination than I’ve ever seen anyone else before.”
Leader of the House of Commons Jacob Rees-Mogg told the BBC that Johnson’s move to suspend parliament is “a completely proper constitutional procedure.”
Asked by a BBC reporter at Aberdeen airport, the nearest airport to Queen Elizabeth II’s vacation home in Balmoral, northern Scotland, if the government is trying to avoid parliamentary scrutiny, he said “certainly not.”
Rees-Mogg travelled with Chief Whip Mark Spencer to relay Johnson’s request to the Queen, and declined to be drawn on how the monarch responded. “Anything the Queen says is private, as you know,” he said.
In a speech in Paris, Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay was expected to urge the French government to start bilateral talks with the UK on how to mitigate the worst impact of a no-deal Brexit.
Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the main opposition Labour Party, said he and lawmakers opposed to a no-deal Brexit will do everything they can to prevent PM Boris Johnson from suspending parliament, laying out his strategy for when MPs return from summer recess next week.