Sterling fell across the board yesterday and is still at low levels this morning after the Queen agreed, as constitutionally expected, to Boris Johnson’s plan to suspend Parliament. Parliament will be closed for five weeks in September and October, however the government say that there will still be time to debate Brexit. Cabinet Minister Michael Gove and Johnson himself have insisted that the suspension is not an attempt to obstruct any opposition to a no-deal scenario.
Despite this, the decision has been met with a strong backlash from some MPs. Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davison is reportedly close to quitting, whilst House of Commons Speaker John Bercow described the move as a “constitutional outrage.” As well as this, a petition to stop the proroguing of Parliament has received more than a million signatures.
There has been a mixed reaction from the EU, with the European Parliament Brexit Chief calling the move to suspend UK Parliament “sinister.” The European Commission took a diplomatic stance, however, saying that they’re “not going to speculate on what this means in terms of next steps in the UK’s parliamentary procedures.”
