Geoffrey Cox: Did he turn this level of bluster onto Boris Johnson after learning his boss may be lying about complying with the law?
Why are we hearing that Geoffrey Cox – the Attorney General – may resign if Boris Johnson refuses to postpone Brexit?
Did nobody tell him that his boss has been working to engineer a “no deal” departure from the European Union since before he became PM?
Mr Johnson twice voted against Theresa May’s withdrawal agreement, in line with the wishes of the Conservative Party’s European Research Group (ERG), whose members want a “no deal” Brexit.
He received financial support in his bid to become Tory leader from hedge fund bosses who, we’re told, have bet heavily on the pound plummeting and inflation rocketing after a “no deal” Brexit and it has been said that Mr Johnson is working hard to arrange it for them.
The aborted prorogation of Parliament last month was an attempt to prevent MPs from preventing a “no deal” Brexit.
After it failed, Mr Johnson tried to shame Opposition leaders into triggering a general election. The campaigning period would run beyond October 31, meaning his “no deal” Brexit would be achieved.
Failing that, we have now learned that he may challenge the Queen to sack him, in the belief that she is more likely to dissolve Parliament and demand an election – achieving the same result.
So it should have come as no surprise to the top lawyer in Mr Johnson’s administration that his boss is not keen on any Brexit deal.
But it seems Mr Cox was still shocked when Mr Johnson threatened to refuse to sign the letter calling for a delay in the UK’s departure from the EU, if the latest attempt at a deal fails.
This is required by law after Mr Johnson failed to prevent Parliament from passing the so-called Benn Act.
According to the [Mail on Sunday], Attorney General Geoffrey Cox had a “heated” exchange with Mr Johnson last Wednesday over court papers that promise to send the delay letter.
Mr Cox is said to have warned that unless the government made clear it would obey the law, there would be “resignations”.
So what’s going on? Did Mr Cox neglect to read the appropriate memo, or has Mr Johnson been keeping him in the dark deliberately?
Is he incapable of keeping up to date with the news?
Or is this just an arranged drama, to distract us all?
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Attorney General Geoffrey Cox was brought to the House of Commons to answer questions about the Supreme Court’s decision that his advice on the prorogation of Parliament was entirely wrong.
But he seems to have spent much of his time at the Dispatch Box ranting about Brexit and challenging the Opposition parties to support a general election – just to get him and his boss Boris Johnson off the hook.
Why would anybody want to do that?
He started by saying that the government accepts the judgement of the Supreme Court that Parliament should not have been prorogued without any reason – and certainly without any good reason. He claimed the government acted in good faith and in the belief that their approach was both lawful and constitutional.
He justified this claim by reminding MPs that “these are complex matters, on which senior and distinguished lawyers will disagree. The divisional court, led by the Lord Chief Justice, as well as Lord Doherty in the outer house of Scotland, agreed with the Government’s position, but we were disappointed that, in the end, the Supreme Court took a different view. Of course, we respect its judgement.”
But he did not rule out the possibility that the Boris Johnson administration would try to prorogue Parliament again.
It was when Rory Stewart asserted that the Supreme Court had made a “profoundly conservative” decision to support the sovereignty of Parliament, and that it was for the Commons – “the only directly elected representatives of the people” – to determine the form in which Brexit takes place that Mr Cox lost his rag.
“This Parliament has declined three times to pass a withdrawal Act to which the Opposition had absolutely no objection,” he said. “We now have a wide number in this House setting their face against leaving at all. When this Government draw the only logical inference from that position, which is that we must leave therefore without any deal at all, they still set their face, denying the electorate the chance of having their say in how this matter should be resolved.”
Of course this is not true, and as a lawyer Mr Cox must have seen the falsehood in his argument.
If MPs were against leaving the EU at all, then it is not logical to infer that the UK must leave without a withdrawal agreement – in other words, on the worst possible terms.
Still, we may welcome the admission that Boris Johnson’s government is working to achieve a “no deal” Brexit – and has been working towards it since before it tried to prorogue Parliament.
And Mr Cox must also know that Labour policy is to give the electorate a chance to decide whether to support a future withdrawal agreement or remain in the EU, in a future referendum that the Conservatives have consistently refused to let voters have.
Then he launched into the rant that has become so well-repeated on TV and in the social media:
“This Parliament is a dead Parliament. It has no moral right to sit on these green benches… This Parliament is a disgrace.”
Attorney General Geoffrey Cox says “cowardly” MPs for not having “the courage to face the electorate” in a general election. pic.twitter.com/2NcQcgMEed
The simple fact is that the current UK Parliament isn’t dead at all; it has another three years to sit until its time is up.
Boris Johnson – thanks to people like Mr Cox – is in a mire entirely of his own making. Thanks to their joint mistakes, they are faced with a simple choice: achieve a Brexit deal by October 31 or, failing, beg the EU for another extension so they (or someone else) can achieve one in the future.
If they are forced into the latter option, then Jeremy Corbyn may support a general election – because the Conservatives will have shown the electorate that they are entirely unworthy of support.
Parliament is, therefore, performing exactly the role it is intended to carry out – holding the government to account.
The simple fact is that Mr Johnson and his cronies are now in a position where they cannot force the UK into leaving the EU on terms that benefit only themselves and their business partners; those terms must be transparent and they must have the support of MPs who have the well-being of their constituents at heart, rather than the possibility of boosting their own bank balances by selling off vital services like the NHS to Donald Trump’s United States (for example).
Journalist Paul Mason drew the obvious conclusion:
What's important about Cox's disgraceful slur "dead parliament" is that the ostensible reason they prorogued was to introduce a whole new year's worth of laws into it via the Queen's Speech. It reveals the lie: Prorogation was always about shutting down Parliament.
Exactly. From this we may also infer that the intention has always been to silence your elected representatives until the “no deal” Brexit – that Mr Cox has admitted the government wants – had been achieved. Then Mr Johnson wold have called an election in the belief that voters would support the prime minister who had actually managed to take the UK out of the EU, no matter what form that departure took.
An immediate election would also be advantageous to him in that it would deprive voters of the chance to experience the consequences of Mr Johnson’s “no deal” Brexit before making their choice.
Geoffrey Cox now blaming the Opposition for not passing the Conservatives withdrawal Bill and now saying the HoC has no longer a right to sit. This from a party with no majority who has been found to have acted unlawfully. Disingenuous.
Now, stuck between a rock and a hard place, Mr Johnson and his ministers – including Mr Cox – can only rail at the other MPs who are forcing them to do what the nation requires, falsely accusing the Opposition parties of cowardice in refusing to approve a general election while a “no deal” Brexit is still achievable.
Despite the Attorney General's theatrics to distract from unlawful Tory actions, one thing is clear.
Labour will force a General Election once the extension preventing No Deal is nailed down.
That could be right after the EU summit. Or sooner if the extension is sorted before.
All things considered, we have many reasons to be grateful to Mr Cox; he has given the game away and no member of the government can now deny that it has been caught, disgracefully trying to silence democracy.
But the manner in which the Attorney-General put his case was arrogant and provocative. No wonder Labour’s Barry Shearman was infuriated:
Dr Jennifer Cassidy tweeted: “If you watch anything today, watch this. Barry Shearman, usually a calm figure speaks with the fury, frustration and anger that millions of us feel.”
Oh – and there’s one more pearl from Mr Cox’s appearance before Parliament: He said the 2016 EU referendum is not binding on the government; there is no need to go through with Brexit at all.
Here’s what he said: “The law in relation to the referendum is that it was not binding upon this Parliament. It was binding in every moral sense upon those who promised the British people that it would be implemented, but it was not binding as a matter of law.”
Wow has Cox just admitted that the Referendum isn’t binding in law?
— Dr « Keep Calm & Carp On » Lindsay Maxwell (@ParisDaguerre) September 25, 2019
Yes.
This is welcome as it will shut down, once and for all, the argument that has raged about it ever since the result became known.
So, ultimately, this arrogant blowhard has done us all a great service.
He has admitted that Boris Johnson has spent his entire period as prime minister trying to dodge democracy, in a bid to force a “no deal” Brexit with its unwanted consequences onto the public, based on the result of a plebiscite that has no legal binding whatsoever.
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Eight of Boris Johnson’s cabinet ministers are leeching money from the public to pay their own rent while acting as landlords themselves, renting out properties to others.
Last year they claimed a total of £145,838 back from taxpayers for properties they live in while in London.
While there is nothing illegal in what these people are doing, let us remember that they belong to a party that has consistently filibustered attempts to reform the private accommodation rental sector.
So, for example, Tories talked out a private members’ bill to prevent so-called “revenge” evictions (and the MPs doing the talking were themselves landlords).
And the same landlords also blocked plans to force landlords to ensure their properties are fit for human habitation.
So the following people are living it up, having co-operated in forcing tenants across the country to put up with substandard living conditions or be evicted.
Here’s the list:
Defence secretary Ben Wallace claimed £27,550 for rent in 2018/19 but lets out a flat in south-west London.
Minister without portfolio and Tory Party chairman James Cleverly billed taxpayers £14,400 while letting out a house in Lewisham, south-east London – just seven miles from Westminster.
Northern Powerhouse minister Jake Berry claimed £13,050 for rent while getting income from three houses in Anglesey.
Welsh Secretary Alun Cairns claimed £18,900 for rent but let a property in Cardiff to tenants.
Scottish Secretary Alister Jack claimed £11,310 while earning income from two cottages in his Dumfries and Galloway constituency.
Security Minister Brandon Lewis charged £21,795 while renting out his home in Essex.
Attorney General Geoffrey Cox charged £22,680 while letting a property in London and farmland in west Devon.
And Chief Whip Mark Spencer claimed £16,153 for hotels while pocketing rent on a farm.
On top of their £79,468 MPs’ salaries, ministers receive at least £31,680 for extra responsibilities.
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How kind of Geoffrey Cox, the attorney-general, to confirm This Site’s appraisal of what the assurances Theresa May has brought back from Strasbourg mean.
I wrote earlier that the “joint statement” and “joint legally-binding instrument” on the Northern Irish border backstop simply delay the need for the UK to find “alternative arrangements” to the controversial stopgap protocol until December 2020, by which time Theresa May could have ceased to be prime minister. I suggested that she was trying to pass the poisoned chalice to someone else.
Today, Mr Cox has said “the legal risk remains unchanged that … the United Kingdom would have … no internationally lawful means of exiting the protocol’s arrangements, save by agreement”.
So nothing has changed, to quote Mrs May’s own infamous remarks of a few years ago.
Apparently the DUP, the Northern Irish party propping up Mrs May’s minority government, has already said it cannot back her in today’s meaningful vote, on the basis of this information.
And it is well worth remembering that the votes in Parliament today (March 12) are about much more than the backstop, as the economist Jonathan Portes points out:
He wrote: “There is no option that will resolve the cloud of uncertainty that hangs over the UK economy any time soon, and none which can credibly claim to avert the risk of substantial long-term damage. The chancellor famously claimed that ‘no one voted to be poorer’. Maybe, maybe not. But… most of our elected representatives will almost certainly – one way or the other – do just that.”
The alternative is a political crisis which may result in something even worse – or something better. All things considered, I’ll take the crisis.
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As one commentator noted, there really isn’t enough popcorn in the world for the festivities taking place in the House of Commons today (December 4) – starting with the government’s humiliation at being found in contempt of Parliament.
MPs voted to find the government in contempt by a margin of 311 votes to 293.
Theresa May and her advisers must now deliver all legal advice they received before agreeing their Brexit deal with the EU to Parliament – or face the possibility of further sanction.
The Tory government had been in turmoil, desperately trying to defend against the motion that Attorney-General Geoffrey Cox committed the contempt by refusing to provide MPs with the information as demanded by the Commons in a Humble Motion that was approved unanimously on November 13.
– but the serious issue behind it is that Mrs May and her cronies have defied the rule of law. Parliament has supremacy over the government and the government may not ignore Parliament’s will.
Here’s a quick summary of the issue:
IMPORTANT: Today we’re joining forces with all the other parties to prove that the Tories are in contempt of Parliament.
Sir Keir Starmer, Labour’s Shadow Brexit Secretary, opened the debate by demanding that Parliament rule the government to be in contempt.
He said the issue was whether the government had complied with a binding order of the House to release the Attorney-General’s legal advice.
The government is wilfully refusing to comply with a binding motion of the House and is therefore in contempt, he said.
The House of Commons is a higher authority than the government, he said. Parliament is sovereign, not the executive.
He pointed out that the government was making “a plea of mitigation”, not a defence.
And he pointed out that “for months the government has ignored opposition day motions and now that tactic has got them in very deep water indeed”.
Then Andrea Leadsom, Leader of the Commons, presented a government amendment – that the matter should be referred to the Commons’ privileges committee. This is normal procedure, but Opposition parties and the DUP have demanded that the matter be handled by Parliament because it refers to a vote that is happening next week.
In his speech, Sir Keir Starmer had addressed this claim: “The short point is this: there is nothing to refer. A binding order was made and the government is refusing to comply with it. The government is simply playing for time, hoping this is in the long grass until the vote has gone.”
Ms Leadsom called on MPs to “act with caution” in the contempt vote. She said the government had put up the A-G for two hours of “frank” questions and published a 48-page legal position paper in lieu of full advice.
That is exactly the point – the government put forward what it wanted to provide, rather than what it was ordered to provide. She was as good as admitting the contempt Sir Keir Starmer had alleged.
Then she made a point that became a subject for humour:
After that, the debate got bogged down in technicalities and nit-picking.
Notable in the midst of this was Jacob Rees-Mogg’s magnificent attempt to face in both directions at once. He said the government could not refuse to honour a Humble Address, claiming the national interest, because “the government interest and the national interest are different things”. Therefore the demand for the full legal advice on the Brexit deal must be honoured. But he said he would be supporting the government’s amendment – because he did not think the motion went far enough and should have identified the culprit and suggested a punishment.
More seriously: One MP after another stood up to suggest that publishing the papers would not be in the national interest because it may prejudice future relationships with others. This was misleading Parliament – and the country.
The Humble Address did not demand publication of the legal papers; it did not suggest that they should be made available to the general public – it called for them to be “laid before Parliament”. The only people who would see them would be MPs, and only in order to inform their opinions and debate on the Brexit agreement. So arguments about harming the national interest were nonsense.
The government’s amendment was first to be tested – and fell by just four votes, with 307 in favour and 311 against.
The government must now publish the Attorney-General’s final legal advice in full – and has committed to do so tomorrow (December 5).
Shadow Attorney-General Geoffrey Cox: Metaphorically, he put his own head on the block.
Never mind anything else you’ve heard about the government’s legal advice on its Brexit deal; this is the real reason the Tories are facing contempt of Parliament proceedings:
And the things that voice said when he appeared in the Commons to justify refusing to provide the full legal advice present a summary of the legal advice to MPs were preposterous too.
Without wishing to be discourteous – it's like a *car crash* audition for Rumpole of the Bailey. https://t.co/FmPsUa7Xsp
Nobody was convinced by his performance (apart from, perhaps, Kenneth Clarke. Perhaps he had been smoking one fat cigar too many, or listening to one jazz piece too loud, before entering the Commons chamber). Here’s the issue:
Nobody should confuse a very long statement from Cox, with Parliament getting what it unanimously agreed to on a binding motion, namely, the full and final legal advice from the Attorney General to the Cabinet.
If the Government did not want to publish the full and final legal advice they should have whipped their MPs to vote against the binding motion. They didn’t because they knew they would lose. Time to publish.
The problem for the Tory government was that, when the Humble Address motion was made on November 13, there was no way it could have won a vote, and losing would have been taken as a sign that Parliament had lost confidence in the Conservatives’ ability to rule. The choice to accept the motion was the lesser of the evils on offer.
But then the government tried to back out of the commitment it had accepted – to provide, in full, the legal advice that supported Theresa May’s Brexit deal. This simple act indicates that there is something to hide, no matter what Mr Cox may say:
But, if the legal advice is bad, they have duty to reveal it. We're talking about the future of 65 million men, women and children. That's a lot of lives at risk. This is not an Eton game. This is f***ing serious. https://t.co/2LaoTaPjqn
It is the suggestion that the Tories are hiding the facts that has led Commons Speaker John Bercow to schedule a debate on contempt of Parliament proceedings, to happen today – December 4 – before the start of a five-day debate on the Brexit deal.
He did this after representatives of every Opposition party in the Commons, including the DUP, wrote to him demanding that the government be held in contempt:
NEW: Labour, SNP, Lib Dems, DUP, Plaid and Greens writing joint letter to Speaker calling for contempt of Parliament proceedings over Brexit legal advice pic.twitter.com/B0vpuQGKDP
Despite Cox’s theatrical efforts, opposition parties – including government’s alleged partner Northern Ireland’s DUP – ask Speaker to allow motion which would see government ruled in contempt for failing to publish FULL legal advice on @theresa_may’s Brexit plan pic.twitter.com/jQc9hoFFup
Some have suggested that the DUP may have an ulterior motive for taking part in this:
If Labour table a "no confidence" vote in Theresa May's Tory govt, it'll be All-Their-Christmasses-At-Once time for the DUP. They'll be able to demand whatever they want. Gold plated bathrooms. Holidays in the Caribbean. Dinosaur-free natural history museums. All with YOUR money.
But it is possible for that party to profit either way, as a future government – of any colour – may still have to rely on DUP votes to get its Brexit plans passed.
The result? As stated: A debate on a motion to find ministers in contempt of Parliament due to their failure to comply with the Humble Address passed on November 13.
No penalty is spelt out in the motion because it is intended to act as a final warning – but Labour spokespeople have said that if it is passed and the government still fails to comply with the Humble Address then the party would seek further sanctions.
These may include the suspension of Mr Cox.
But it is also likely that David Lidington, Mrs May’s de facto lieutenant, may also be held in contempt and suspended from the Commons.
And how have the Tories responded?
They’ve responded with abject panic, at first flooding the Commons chamber late into Monday evening to filibuster a debate on Scotland’s foreign policy footprint, in order to give their party’s whips time to submit their own amendment to the contempt motion.
But that amendment turned out to be a limp attempt to kick the matter down the road – referring it to the Commons privileges committee. This is unlikely to win the support of Opposition MPs and the DUP, all of whom have scented metaphorical blood.
One MP who appears to have made up his mind already is Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell. Read his words, watch the video clip of Shadow Solicitor-General Nick Thomas-Symonds, and ask yourself whether you think you deserve better from the government – considering the enormity of what’s at stake here.
The contempt the Tories have shown Parliament and the people of this country demonstrates that they are not fit for the office they hold. https://t.co/PJgsEE8x5s
Geoffrey Cox: The Attorney General deliberately refused to provide Parliament with the documents it had demanded, making it impossible to judge either that advice or Theresa May’s Brexit agreement.
The Conservative government is facing contempt of Parliament proceedings after publishing a 43-page – redacted – summary of the legal advice provided to it about its Brexit agreement with the EU, rather than providing all the advice it was given to MPs.
As the Humble Motion approved by Parliament unanimously on November 13 was for the full advice and not a summary that has been edited to remove anything critical of the government, Mrs May’s administration may face contempt proceedings as early as this evening (December 3).
There was a possibility that the Tories could fend off such proceedings, if Attorney General Geoffrey Cox were to announce a u-turn by the government during his oral statement on the matter this afternoon.
But he did not.
Instead, he simply commended his 43-page summary – he called it a “commentary” – to the Commons.
He said: “The matters of law can only inform the political decision” and that, in the time available “it is impossible to cover each and every matter of law that arises over 585 pages” of the withdrawal agreement.
It seems to This Writer that if the government’s top lawyer hasn’t had time to consider all the implications of an international agreement of such seismic importance as this, he should have demanded an extension until he had been able to do the job properly. Anything else is incompetence and he admitted as much at around 4.30pm today.
Failure to bring the full legal advice before Parliament is therefore also failure to show what information was not provided to the Tory government. Without that, it would be impossible for Parliament to support Mrs May’s deal.
Without it, the advice provided on the customs union, the Northern Ireland border backstop, Gibraltar or whatever else is meaningless and Labour is right to launch contempt proceedings.
Mr Cox said MPs only had to ask him for information and they would receive it – but this assumes that he is in possession of such information and he had already admitted that he had not had time to consider all the angles.
Not only is the government failing in its duty to agree a reasonable deal that is the best possible for the United Kingdom, it is holding Parliament in contempt by refusing to allow other MPs the means to analyse the deal that has been agreed – alongside the legal advice provided by Mr Cox – and identify failings that must be corrected for the protection of us all.
We should be grateful to Mr Cox for making it clear that Mrs May’s Brexit agreement must not be passed by Parliament under any circumstance.
But his behaviour towards MPs is utterly unacceptable and the government must be held to account for it.
Contempt of Parliament should not be a trivial offence. If it is proved, then the guilty party could face expulsion from the House of Commons. So it will be interesting to see who will face Labour’s proceedings.
Mr Cox would seem the obvious target – but he has been constrained by the choices of others. Most notable among these is Theresa May, who has recklessly pushed her lumbering, clumsy Brexit juggernaut through Parliament and the EU at breakneck speed.
Shadow Solicitor-General Nick Thomas-Symonds said the Attorney General’s statement was entirely unacceptable.
He said there were differences between the legal positions leaked to the press over the weekend – and why did that happen? – and the political decisions of which Mr Cox spoke.
And he pointed out that the Humble Motion passed on November 13 demanded the final legal advice to cabinet, not a commentary.
“Isn’t the reality of the situation that the government does not want MPs to see the full advice for fear of the political consequences?” he asked.
That certainly seems to be the case.
Not only has Mrs May’s government deliberately committed a serious Parliamentary offence; it has torpedoed its own deal.
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What is the point of having an offence of ‘contempt of Parliament’ if any punishment is so light that MPs aren’t worried about committing it?
I always thought MPs who were found guilty of contempt faced the possibility of being expelled from Parliament but after Conservative MPs – notably Iain Duncan Smith – committed the offence time and time again, it became clear that the threat of penalisation for it is a paper tiger.
In fact, the most discomfort any MP is likely to suffer is a paper cut from the notification letter. Big deal.
And in this particular instance, who will take the fall?
The government is being accused of “showing contempt for this house” by Labour’s Shadow Brexit Secretary Sir Keir Starmer, who has demanded to know why ministers are refusing to publish the government’s full legal advice relating to Theresa May’s Brexit deal in an emergency Commons debate this morning (November 29).
He said the government’s counter offer of sending attorney general Geoffrey Cox to answer questions on Monday was “not good enough”.
So – what, would everybody in the government be found in contempt?
Would it be Mr Cox, the Attorney General who said the Tory government would not publish the full legal advice, despite having been ordered to do so in a binding vote on November 13?
Or how about Robert Buckland, the solicitor general who said Mr Cox would attend Parliament and answer questions on the matter “in the fullest possible way” – which means nothing, as their idea of what’s “possible” certainly won’t coincide with that of the Labour Party or the British public?
Some cabinet sources say that the full legal advice makes clear that the mutual exit mechanism negotiated by Theresa May to the controversial Northern Irish backstop is a figleaf, and that in reality the European Union has an effective veto on whether the UK can abandon it.
10 Downing Street has denied this. So should Mrs May face contempt proceedings, for failing to supply the full factual information that would support this claim?
Either way, you have to agree with Sir Keir:
Not good enough. Parliament won the right to see the full legal advice and that is precisely what we expect to see. Labour will not let ministers off the hook. https://t.co/PVP3ROudwc
Commons Speaker John Bercow has made it clear that the government could be in contempt of Parliament if it fails to provide the information as demanded:
— FactcheckUK: You can't TRUST #Johnson (@bheardmedia) November 28, 2018
My opinion is that any demand for action in respect of contempt of Parliament can wait until after MPs hear Mr Cox on Monday. There’s no reason to go off half-cocked.
But my fear is that, even if anyone in the government is found guilty, it won’t mean anything at all.
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“Now, see here, Jeremy – you’re the new Foreign Secretary and you’d better get used to it!””Yes ma’am! I live to serve, ma’am!”
If this motley crew is the best Theresa May can dredge up to form the latest version of her government, she should throw in the towel now.
Jeremy Hunt – a pathetic, chinless yes-man who, through a mixture of malice and incompetence, has managed to ruin the National Health Service – becomes Foreign Secretary. It is a gift that has been tarnished by the fact that Theresa May reportedly offered it to David Davis in a vain attempt to persuade him not to resign from her government last night – and then tried to lie about it, saying she offered him Andrea Leadsom’s job as Leader of the House of Commons instead.
Matt Hancock – another toadie whose most recent scandal involved the launch of an app in his name which collected contact details, photos and videos, check-ins, and other digital content, even when users had denied permission for it to do so – is the new Health Secretary. How many scandals have there been about Tory health secretaries trying to collect and sell off patients’ information to private companies for unknown purposes?
Jeremy Wright becomes Culture Secretary after making such a huge impression as Attorney General that people think the role is still held by Dominic Grieve.
I had to look up Geoffrey Cox, the new Attorney General, on Wikipedia. It seems he is a barrister, so that’s something. Beyond that, he is notable only for having been involved in an alleged tax avoidance scheme. And now he’s our top lawyer? Hmm!
What a shambles. In fact, that’s what the new government should be dubbed: “Theresa May’s Brexit Shambles.”
Jeremy Hunt was named as foreign secretary to replace Boris Johnson on Monday night, one of three men who supported remain during the referendum campaign who were promoted in an evening reshuffle.
The health secretary was called to Downing Street to be offered the job by Theresa May after a tumultuous day of resignations in response to her soft Brexit plans.
Matt Hancock, the culture secretary, was appointed as Hunt’s successor at health, while Jeremy Wright, the attorney general, is to become culture secretary.
The Tory MP Geoffrey Cox was later named as the new attorney general.
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