Brexit: Jeremy Corbyn calls on Boris Johnson to resign after supreme court ruling – as it happened

24 Sept 201909.43 EDT

Boris Johnson should be impeached if he breaks law, says Plaid Cymru

Frances Perraudin

Plaid Cymru’s Westminster Leader, Liz Saville Roberts, said opposition party leaders should be ready to impeach Boris Johnson if he failed to request an extension to article 50 to avoid a no-deal Brexit. She said:

Boris Johnson has already driven a bulldozer through the constitution, so no longer are ideas like impeachment far-fetched. I will tell other opposition party leaders, we need to be ready to impeach Boris Johnson if he breaks the law.

In 2004, Boris Johnson supported an attempt to impeach Tony Blair over the Iraq war, co-signing a motion tabled by current Plaid Cymru leader, Adam Price.

Writing in a column for The Telegraph at the time, Johnson said that Blair deserved to be impeached because he had “treated parliament and the public with contempt”. Saville Roberts said:

Impeachment was a process backed by Boris Johnson not so long ago. A man sacked for serially lying backed the impeachment of Blair for the same reason – lying. If the prime minister becomes a law-breaker, we have an even stronger case for impeachment than the very cause he advocated back in 2004.

A spokesman for Plaid Cymru said the party’s priority was to deliver a people’s vote, not a general election, and that they would vote against any motion of no confidence. “Parliament must be sitting whilst the extension [to article 50] is secured, which means beyond the European council meeting scheduled between the 14th to the 19th October,” he said.

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Mark Drakeford, the Welsh first minister, has joined those saying Boris Johnson should resign. He said:

When a prime minister is found to have acted unlawfully and undemocratically, I don’t see how that person thinks that he can legitimately continue in office.

And he tweeted this earlier.

These are from the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg.

I’ve taken down an earlier post about a tweet from @OdysseanProject, which used to be Dominic Cummings’ Twitter feed, because I’ve been told that account is now run by someone else.

From the Telegraph’s Steven Swinford

It does not seem obvious to me that such a motion would pass. Boris Johnson no longer has a majority and, if opposition MPs have spent the last three weeks complaining about prorogation, it is hard to see why, as soon as they got back, the first thing they would do would be vote for another recess for the benefit of the Conservative party.

It would be inconvenient, but not impossible, for the Conservative conference (which starts on Sunday, and is due to run until the following Wednesday) to go ahead with the Commons actually sitting. The Commons does not schedule recesses while the SNP are holding their conference. Boris Johnson could deliver his leader’s speech on the Sunday, instead of on the Wednesday morning as planned. And Commons business could be scheduled to minimise the chances of key votes on the Monday or Tuesday.

1:34

Boris Johnson has just delivered a speech at a business event in New York. He started with some comments on the supreme court ruling that echoed what he said in his TV interviews. (See 1.41pm). These are from my colleague Peter Walker who was there.

Here are the main points from the interviews that Boris Johnson has been giving in New York.

• Johnson said the supreme court ruling would make getting a Brexit deal harder. Asked if he was running out of options, he said “on the contrary”. He went on:

As the law currently stands the UK leaves the EU on 31 October, come what may.

But the interesting thing, the exciting thing for us now, is to get a good deal. And that’s what we’re working on.

I’ll be honest with you, it’s not made much easier by this kind of stuff in parliament, or in the courts. Obviously getting a deal is not made much easier against this background. But we’re going to get on and do it.

• He said he would respect the supreme court ruling - even though he strongly disagreed with it. He said:

Obviously this is a verdict that we will respect and we respect the judicial process. I have to say that I strongly disagree with what the justices have found. I don’t think that it’s right but we will go ahead and of course parliament will come back ...

I don’t think this was the right decision, I think that the prorogation has been used for centuries without this kind of challenge.

• He said he still wanted to go ahead with a Queen’s speech – which would require a fresh prorogation. He said:

I do think there’s a good case for getting on with a Queen’s speech anyway and we will do that ...

I don’t think the justices remotely excluded the possibility of having a Queen’s speech but what we will certainly do is ensure parliament has plenty of time to debate Brexit.

The supreme court ruling does not stop Johnson having a second prorogation, ahead of a Queen’s speech. But it would have to be a normal length one to be lawful – ie, lasting a few days, not weeks.

• He claimed some MPs were trying to frustrate Brexit. He said:

More importantly, let’s be in no doubt that there are a lot of people who want to frustrate Brexit. There are a lot of people who basically want to stop this country from coming out of the EU. And we have a parliament that is unable to be prorogued, it doesn’t want to have an election, and I think it’s time we took this forward.

• He refused to accept that the Benn Act made a no-deal Brexit on 31 October impossible. When it was put to him that the law would not allow a no-deal Brexit on 31 October, he replied:

As the law stands, we leave on October 31. And I’m very hopeful that we will get a deal. I think what the people of the country want is to see parliamentarians coming together in the national interest to get this thing done.

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From ITV’s Robert Peston

Boris Johnson is speaking on Sky News now.

He says he disagrees with the court’s decision.

He says it is usual to have a Queen’s speech now.

Parliament won’t allow an election, but it does not want prorogation either, he says.

Q: Have you run out of options?

On the contrary, Johnson says.

He says he is trying to get a deal.

He says this case has not made his task any easier.

UPDATE: See 1.41pm for the full quotes.

Tom Watson, the deputy Labour leader, was due to address the conference this afternoon. Having to decide to give this slot to Jeremy Corbyn instead, the party offered Watson the chance to address conference tomorrow. But he has turned it down.

Watson’s reference to saving the speech for the next conference is a bit particular. Is that a hint that he still expects to be in post this time next year, unlike perhaps his leader?

Watson does not have much luck with his conference speeches. In 2017 he was given a speaking slot so late that by the time he started many delegates had left. Last year he was not invited to address the main conference at all.