The times that the Remainers now screaming ‘constitutional crisis’ have themselves broken protocol

All have squealed ‘constitutional outrage’ but they, too, have been guilty of breaking political protocol . . .

Sir John Major

The former Tory PM says he’s prepared to take the Government to court if it prorogues Parliament.

Yet while in No 10, in 1997, he was accused of abusing his power by proroguing Parliament for the longest period since 1918 so as to delay the publication of an embarrassing report into the ‘cash for questions’ sleaze scandal involving his Government.

John Bercow

Commons Speaker Bercow has condemned the decision to suspend Parliament as a ‘constitutional outrage’ which he will fight with ‘every bone in my body’. But he broke usual parliamentary precedent in January when he is said to have ignored advice from his officials to permit an amendment being tabled to the draft Brexit deal. 

Ministers accused him, too, of deliberately attempting to frustrate the Government’s attempts to pass Theresa May’s Brexit deal by selecting pro-Remain amendments to be voted on and of making Commons procedure up as he went along.

Lord (Michael) Heseltine

The fervently pro-EU former deputy PM raged: ‘The Government’s decision is a constitutional outrage. I hope that every member of parliament, in feeling this humiliation, will use every legal and constitutional weapon to obstruct a government proposing to force on the British people a historic change for which they have long since lost any mandate.’

In 1976 he was reprimanded for breaking parliamentary protocol by picking up the ceremonial mace in the Commons and swinging the symbol of royal authority in fury after the Labour government passed a Bill he’d opposed.

Ken Clarke

The 79-year-old Tory MP has vowed to stage a revolt to stop Britain crashing out of the EU. Yet last week, he welcomed an unconstitutional suggestion that he might become caretaker prime minister if it was ‘the only way in which the plain majority in Commons that is opposed to a No Deal exit’ could find a way forward.

Dominic Grieve

dissident Tory MP Grieve claims prorogation is ‘tantamount to a coup’. Yet he has planned to take control of Parliament himself. In January, he proposed that the Commons seized control of the Government’s order paper, which lists the business of Parliament, on one day a week, during which it could debate motions.

Tony Blair

He says: ‘No Deal Brexit is an act of unforgivable political and constitutional vandalism.’

This is a bit rich coming from the man who, as PM, misled Parliament by overstating the threat posed by Saddam Hussein in order to get approval to invade Iraq ‘illegally’ in 2003.

Caroline Lucas

The Green Party’s only MP wrote to Johnson saying: ‘Your utter disregard for basic democratic standards, the sovereignty of Parliament and the rights of voters to representation is deeply insulting to — and worrying for — every UK resident.’

Just days earlier, she offered to helicopter in a cabal of MPs of her choosing to run the country. She said: ‘We need an emergency Cabinet and I believe this should be a Cabinet of women.’