Justine Greening Speaks Out Against Proroguing Parliament

And faces challenge that her party is now a 'millstone' round her neck


Justine Greening MP speech on Brexit

Justine Greening, the Putney, Roehampton and Southfields Conservative MP, has stepped into the government shutdown row following Prime Minster Boris Johnson's controversial decision to suspend Parliament until a few weeks before the Brexit deadline.

Most recently the Secretary of State for Education, Ms Greening is a Brexit remainer and last year became the first senior Conservative to come out in favour of a new referendum on the grounds that Parliament was unable to make a decision and therefore the final decision had to be put back to the people.

75% of Ms Greening's Wandsworth constituents who went to the polls in 2016 voted to ‘remain’. This week she was back at the Brexit conundrum forefront and tweeted:

Southfields and Putney Green Party candidate Diana McCann responded to the MP's tweet with the challenge that it was decision time for Ms Greening as to her choice of political party: Meanwhile Tooting’s Labour MP Dr Rosena Allin-Khan said, “You don't deliver on democracy by trashing democracy. To suggest that you would suspend Parliament and put an end to our sovereign democracy just is not right, and we can't do that.”

In response to the news of the Queen’s consent to suspend Parliament for five weeks, Marsha de Cordova, Labour MP for Battersea, tweeted: "Appalled that Boris Johnson, who wanted to 'take back control' for Parliament, now wants to suspend it to stop MPs getting in his way.
"This isn't the action of a democratic PM and I'll work to ensure my constituents have a voice at this pivotal moment.”

The proroguing of Parliament means that MPs - who will return to Parliament for just a few days before the suspension - have less time to pass laws to stop a no-deal Brexit on October 31.

House of Commons Speaker John Bercow also said this week that the move was a "constitutional outrage".

August 30, 2019