Could parliamentary limbo push through no-deal Brexit?

The idea that parliament might be shut down, so that Britain leaves the EU without an agreement when the Article 50 notice period expires, has been discussed by some Leavers since January.

It ceased to be an option in February, when Theresa May ruled out trying to take the UK out without a deal unless parliament agreed to it. There is a clear majority in the House of Commons against a no-deal exit.

As the prime minister was forced towards resignation after her failure to deliver Brexit, the word “prorogation” came back to life as an option for her successor.

Boris Johnson gave the idea rocket boosters when he said, the day after Ms May announced her departure, that, if he were prime minister, “we will leave the EU on 31 October, deal or no deal”.

The immediate question was: if the EU refused to change the deal, and parliament remained opposed both to the deal and to a no-deal exit, how?

If the incoming prime minister, whether Mr Johnson, Dominic Raab, Andrea Leadsom or Esther McVey, rules out a further extension beyond 31 October, their options are few. They could hope by force of personality to persuade MPs to vote either for a cosmetically revised deal or for a no-deal exit. Neither seems likely.

Or they could try to call an immediate general election, fight it on a no-deal policy and hope to have a no-deal majority in the Commons by the end of October. I think that is more likely than many people realise.

Not least because the only other way of taking the UK out of the EU without a deal would be to suspend parliament, using the device of prorogation that has been seized on by armchair constitutional lawyers.

As any belligerent Brexit Party supporter on social media will tell you, the legal default is that the UK leaves the EU on 31 October. So, how to take parliament out of the picture, to stop it preventing us from leaving?

Prorogation is an antique and decorative feature of our constitution-by-convention. From Latin prorogare, “prolong, extend”, it is a sort of limbo into which parliament is consigned between sessions or just before it is dissolved for an election.

The Queen prorogues parliament on the advice of the prime minister, so it is a government decision that does not need parliamentary approval. However, in the past, parliament has tried to vote against prorogation – a Labour motion against prorogation was defeated in the House of Lords during the handover from Harold Macmillan to Alec Douglas-Home as prime minister in 1963.

If such a vote were to be carried in the Commons against the government, it would have no legal force, although no prime minister with honour could ignore it. As honour may not be a decisive consideration, however, we can expect the shadow government of Dominic Grieve, Yvette Cooper and Oliver Letwin to pass a law requiring a Commons vote for prorogation.

John Bercow, the speaker, has made it clear that they would be able to legislate from the backbenches if necessary. Today he was emphatic in ruling out prorogation as an option: “Parliament will not be evacuated from the centre stage of the decision-making process on this important matter. That is simply not going to happen.”

The suspension of parliamentary democracy ought to be unthinkable, but it appears not to be. Some Leavers argue that the referendum mandate overrides parliamentary democracy. But it hardly matters whether Tory leadership candidates rule prorogation in or out. It is not going to happen.

The most plausible route to a no-deal Brexit, therefore, is an October election, as chaotic and unpredictable as it might be. That could well happen.