OPPOSITION parties will today meet at Westminster to consider ways to oust Boris Johnson in a bid to remove the threat of a No-Deal Brexit in just over a month.
The SNP’s Stewart Hosie signalled over the weekend that a vote of no confidence could be held this week with the move perhaps the only way of avoiding crashing out of the EU at the end of October without an agreement.
Nicola Sturgeon hinted on Friday she might back Jeremy Corbyn becoming a “caretaker” prime minister. But the LibDems have refused to back the Labour leader for such a role.
Last night it emerged the Labour veteran MP Margaret Beckett might command the support of MPs as an interim PM who would seek a Brexit extension from the European Council.
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Under the Benn Act, passed earlier this month, the PM is required to seek an extension from Brussels if a new withdrawal deal has not been agreed by October 19.
However, Johnson has repeatedly insisted he will not request a further extension.
Meanwhile, Johnson could face impeachment proceedings under proposals also being considered by opposition parties.
Plans to impeach the Prime Minister were put forward at a meeting of the parties on Thursday and are among options being explored to censure Johnson following last week’s Supreme Court ruling that Parliament had been suspended unlawfully.
The motion, which has been drafted by Plaid Cymru, could be tabled as early as this week, disrupting Johnson’s first Conservative Party conference as leader.
The process would see the House of Commons vote on an impeachment motion, which, if passed, could lead to prosecution and trial. Historically, trials have taken place in Westminster Hall on the parliamentary estate.
Though impeachment was once a common sanction against abuse of power by the executive, the last attempt to persuade the Commons to use it was in 1848, when it was alleged that Lord Palmerston, while foreign minister, had entered into a secret treaty with Russia.
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The proposal would see a committee of MPs constituted to report on the disciplinary mechanisms, including impeachment, available to parliament.
Specifically, the MPs would be asked “whether there exist sufficient grounds to impeach the Rt Hon Boris Johnson on charges of gross misconduct in relation to the unlawful prorogation of Parliament” as well as his threat to break the law by failing to comply with the Benn Act, which aims to stop a No-Deal Brexit on October 31. The report would come after October 19, the date by which the Benn Act requires Johnson to seek an extension of Article 50 to delay Brexit.
No UK Prime Minister has yet been impeached, but Johnson himself supported a bid to impeach Tony Blair when he was Prime Minister. In a column for The Daily Telegraph, Johnson wrote in 2004: “He treated parliament and the public with contempt, and that is why he deserves to be impeached.”
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