Tory leadership candidate Rory Stewart has said he will “bring down” front-runner Boris Johnson as prime minister if he tries to suspend parliament to force through a no-deal Brexit.
The international development secretary, who scraped through to the second round of the contest with 19 votes, repeated his demand for Mr Johnson to come clean on whether he was ready to use the process of “prorogation” to prevent MPs blocking no-deal on 31 October.
Mr Stewart said he and other MPs were ready to sit as a parliament outside the Palace of Westminster if Mr Johnson took this step as PM.
We’ll tell you what’s true. You can form your own view.
From
15p
€0.18
$0.18
USD 0.27
a day, more exclusives, analysis and extras.
And he compared the use of prorogation – which would require the PM to ask the Queen to suspend parliament to a date chosen by the government – to Charles I’s dismissal of parliament in 1629, which paved the way for civil war.
1/5 Made-up quote for The Times
Johnson was sacked from The Times newspaper in the late 1980s after he fabricated a quote from his godfather, the historian Colin Lucas, for a front-page article about the discovery of Edward II’s Rose Palace. “The trouble was that somewhere in my copy I managed to attribute to Colin the view that Edward II and Piers Gaveston would have been cavorting together in the Rose Palace,” he claimed.
Alas, Gaveston was executed 13 years before the palace was built. “It was very nasty,” Mr Johnson added, before attempting to downplay it as nothing more than a schoolboy blunder.
PA
2/5 Sacked from cabinet over cheating lie
Michael Howard gave Boris Johnson two new jobs after becoming leader of the Conservatives in 2003 – party vice-chairman and shadow arts minister.
He was sacked from both positions in November 2004 after assuring Mr Howard that tabloid reports of his affair with Spectator columnist Petronella Wyatt were false and an “inverted pyramid of piffle”. When the story was found to be true, he refused to resign.
PA
3/5 Broken promise to boss
In 1999 Johnson was offered editorship of The Spectator by owner Conrad Black on the condition that he would not stand as an MP while in the post. In 2001 he stood – and was elected – MP for Henley, though Black did allow him to continue as editor despite calling “ineffably duplicitous”
PA
4/5 Misrepresenting the people of Liverpool
As editor of The Spectator, he was forced to apologise for an article in the magazine which blamed drunken Liverpool fans for the 1989 Hillsborough disaster and suggested that the people of the city were wallowing in their victim status.
“Anyone, journalist or politician, should say sorry to the people of Liverpool – as I do – for misrepresenting what happened at Hillsborough,” he said.
PA
5/5 ‘I didn’t say anything about Turkey’
Johnson claimed in January, that he did not mention Turkey during the EU referendum campaign. In fact, he co-signed a letter stating that “the only way to avoid having common borders with Turkey is to vote Leave and take back control”. The Vote Leave campaign also produced a poster reading: “Turkey (population 76 million) is joining the EU”
1/5 Made-up quote for The Times
Johnson was sacked from The Times newspaper in the late 1980s after he fabricated a quote from his godfather, the historian Colin Lucas, for a front-page article about the discovery of Edward II’s Rose Palace. “The trouble was that somewhere in my copy I managed to attribute to Colin the view that Edward II and Piers Gaveston would have been cavorting together in the Rose Palace,” he claimed.
Alas, Gaveston was executed 13 years before the palace was built. “It was very nasty,” Mr Johnson added, before attempting to downplay it as nothing more than a schoolboy blunder.
PA
2/5 Sacked from cabinet over cheating lie
Michael Howard gave Boris Johnson two new jobs after becoming leader of the Conservatives in 2003 – party vice-chairman and shadow arts minister.
He was sacked from both positions in November 2004 after assuring Mr Howard that tabloid reports of his affair with Spectator columnist Petronella Wyatt were false and an “inverted pyramid of piffle”. When the story was found to be true, he refused to resign.
PA
3/5 Broken promise to boss
In 1999 Johnson was offered editorship of The Spectator by owner Conrad Black on the condition that he would not stand as an MP while in the post. In 2001 he stood – and was elected – MP for Henley, though Black did allow him to continue as editor despite calling “ineffably duplicitous”
PA
4/5 Misrepresenting the people of Liverpool
As editor of The Spectator, he was forced to apologise for an article in the magazine which blamed drunken Liverpool fans for the 1989 Hillsborough disaster and suggested that the people of the city were wallowing in their victim status.
“Anyone, journalist or politician, should say sorry to the people of Liverpool – as I do – for misrepresenting what happened at Hillsborough,” he said.
PA
5/5 ‘I didn’t say anything about Turkey’
Johnson claimed in January, that he did not mention Turkey during the EU referendum campaign. In fact, he co-signed a letter stating that “the only way to avoid having common borders with Turkey is to vote Leave and take back control”. The Vote Leave campaign also produced a poster reading: “Turkey (population 76 million) is joining the EU”
Mr Stewart told Sky News that if Mr Johnson prorogued, “every other MP will sit across the road in Methodist Central Hall and we will hold our own session of parliament and we will bring him down”.
He said: “You don’t ever lock the doors on parliament in this country. Somebody who attempted to subvert our constitution, our liberties, our parliament, and who dared to stand as prime minister and claim they could lock the doors on parliament would not deserve to be prime minister.
“This parliament would meet, whether he locked the doors or not, and we would bring him down.”
Any decision to prorogue would indicate that a PM knew that parliament was “entirely and completely opposed to the central plank of his policy” and could only be stopped from removing him by being prevented from sitting, said Mr Stewart.
“That’s what Charles I did and that led to very, very disturbing things in our country,” he said.
Mr Johnson has not ruled out suspending parliament in order to fulfil his pledge to take the UK out of the EU by 31 October, deal or no deal. But he is understood to have told MPs at a hustings earlier this week that he was not in favour of the controversial move.
Hard Brexit leadership contender Dominic Raab has made clear that he regards prorogation as part of the “toolkit” which he may have to use to convince Brussels he is serious about being ready to leave without a deal on 31 October.
Johnson supporter Daniel Johnson supporter Daniel Kawczynski said: “Mr Stewart only just avoided being thrown out from this competition by two votes and now he is saying he is going to take Boris on. I think he should have a little bit of humility at this moment in time.”
Veteran former cabinet minister Kenneth Clarke, who is backing Mr Stewart for the leadership, said he agreed that the new PM should not lock parliament’s doors.
“It would be an outrage if we had a new prime minister who determined that because he hadn’t got a majority in parliament for a policy he would close parliament down and use dictatorial powers,” said Mr Clarke. Any candidate prepared to use prorogration would “rule themselves out for being PM”, he said.
