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Hi, I'm Toby Young, one of Colette's London-based editors.

On Wednesday, August 28th, the government of Great Britain in Northern Ireland

announced it would be asking the Queen to

parogue Parliament, i.e. bring an end to the current session of the British Parliament so a new one can

begin. Nothing unusual about that. All governments do it with

parliamentary sessions typically lasting 12 months. But this particular move

has been greeted with outrage, with the request being described as a coup and the Prime Minister

Boris Johnson as a tin pot dictator. Why? Because prorogations usually only last a few days, whereas the government has requested that this one run for over four weeks,

reducing the amount of time Parliament has to discuss Brexit in the run up to the exit deadline, which is October 31st.

Boris claims the reason he's proroging Parliament is because he wants his government

to set out its legislative program, and by convention that is done via the mechanism of a speech

given by the Queen, but written by the government, at the beginning of a new parliamentary session.

However, that would only require Parliament to be paroked for a few days.

His real motive, according to his critics, is to reduce the room for maneuver by those parliamentarians who want to stop the UK leaving the European

Union on October 31st, particularly leaving with no deal.

...