Steven Rose

Amidst the crisis of Brexit, Parliament goes on. Bills, both from the government and from private members, are still debated, adjournment debates go on, and select committees continue to sit. The system that has developed over hundreds of years weathers both the Brexit paralysis and a hostile Prime Minister yet to notice that she heads a minority government responsible for the greatest constitutional challenge in living memory. This chaos does, however, manage to take the eye off of some of the other functions of our Parliament. The week before last, this was to the detriment of two long serving, dedicated servants of House of Commons. Mike Gapes and Ian Austin, former Labour MPs who left the party in response to the damaging actions and behaviours of the party leadership, were forced out of their roles on the select committee for foreign affairs by that same party leadership, despite good sense and standard procedure. On Tuesday, these two parliamentarians sat in the chamber

During the tumultuous events within Westminster two weeks ago, the Guardian broke the news that Iain Duncan Smith, Owen Patterson, and an unnamed non-cabinet MP have been engaged in talks with right-wing EU governments with the intention of lobbying them to veto the UK’s request for an extension to article 50 should Parliament vote in favour of such an action, as indeed it did. We should be clear about what these elected representatives, who are meant to serve the interests of their constituents, and the people of the United Kingdom, were doing. They have decided to ally themselves with the likes of Victor Orban, who has treated asylum seekers as animals , and the Polish government, which has all but forced the resignation of their country’s top judges in a bidt   to eliminate the rule of law. Of course, Government’s present and past have done the same,   due to both geopolitical matters and a long history of alliance.our shared history . Relationships with other states are nuanc

After witnessing the Government's actions over the last nineteen years, one might conclude that the Conservative party has been locked in a monomaniacal pursuit of the elimination of government debt regardless of who ultimately pays the price for that and how high the human cost of that pursuit is. The Government has realised now that it can avoid going into debt by instead forcing vulnerable citizens, those implicated in the use of disguised remuneration schemes, into debt, and taking that as tax. Disguised remuneration schemes are forms of payment where the standard wage agreement is replaced with a loan, the terms of which are such that it is unlikely to ever be repaid. The upshot of this is that the payment is not then subject to income taxation or national insurance contributions. The historic use of these schemes, in some cases dating back twenty years, has recently come to light, drawing the attention of the current Government . Naturally enough, HM Revenue and Customs