The Art Of Politics: August Supplemental – To Prorogue Or Not Prorogue

Typical isn’t it? I go away for a few days and post up the August Art Of Politics feature a couple of days early, assuming that anything that happens in the run-up to Brexit here won’t be that huge. Oh, how wrong I was.

We got a lot of brilliant cartoon commentary and many of us learnt a new word… Prorogue.

Peter Brookes (The Times – paywalled)

What happened was this… the UK is all set to leave the European Union (EU) on 31 October. Except the politicians are on holiday – because why on earth would they delay that to deal with the most important political event in the last five decades?

Our glorious leader Boris Johnson is all set to push ahead with it, whether or not we can negotiate a deal to leave or crash out with the dreaded no-deal. But opposing him in this we have various opposition leaders and even some of his own Conservative MPs. And all of that means we’ve had various bits of political manoeuvring, suggestions of votes of no confidence, the possibility of the opposition booting out Boris and calling a general election… oh, it’s been constitutional crisis fun all round.

Ben Jennings

And then Boris brought out the Prorogue – the act of discontinuing a session of parliament without dissolving it and needing an election.

His plan is to bring parliament back for a bit, then go ahead on the prorogue and make it impossible (or at least very, very, very impractical) for those opposing his plans to do anything about it. Funny how democracy at times can seem like a very dictator-led system, don’t you think?

Seamus Jennings on the whole 1984 aspect of it all

Things are getting, as they say in sports, a bit tasty here in UK politics, with talk of trampling over 400 years of constitutional law, accusations of abuse of power, mass protests on the streets, and the Internet filling up with commentary.

All of which brought Martin Rowson to this fabulous bit of on the nose commentary, invoking Godwin’s Law (that old chestnut of the online discussion grows, the probability of someone comparing things to Hitler gets ever closer).

Part of the Prorogue thing involved Boris taking the proposal to the Queen, who has (in a sweeping generalisation) less constitutional power than the designated survivor over in the US and had no choice but to say yes.

Here’s Steve Bell on that… twice…

The penultimate word goes to Christian Adams, with this crystal clear illustration of what comes next…

But… the absolute finest political cartoon came out right at the end of the month, from the incomparable Chris Riddell, whose depiction of British democracy being brought to its knees is everything a political cartoon can be – totally true, heartbreakingly poignant, absolutely biased, and beautifully observed…