Parliament will open with a stripped down Queen’s Speech if Boris Johnson is re-elected as Prime Minister, it was announced today.
No 10 said the new Parliament will be summoned on December 17 with the election of the Speaker and swearing in of MPs.
The Queen’s Speech would take place two days later with “reduced ceremonial elements,” a government spokesman said.
It would come just two months after the Queen attended Parliament for the State Opening after the storm over Mr Johnson unlawfully shutting down the Commons.
This speech is expected to be a less formal affair and will be more like after the snap election in 2017 when the Queen arrived in a car instead of a carriage.
There was also no royal procession into the House of Lords chamber and the Queen wore a dress rather than her ceremonial robes and crown.
On the “reduced” ceremonial aspects, the spokesman added: “That’s for a couple of reasons both because of the early general election and proximity of the State Opening to Christmas.
“If there is a change of government following the election it would obviously be for the new government to set out its timetable for when the Queen’s Speech would take place.
“It would be more likely it would be in January but that would be for them.”
Asked if there would be no carriage, he said: “Ceremonial aspects will be reduced. Precisely what they will be, I’m sure we will be able to set out a bit closer to the time.”
It comes after Mr Johnson promised to bring his Brexit legislation back to the House of Commons before Christmas if the Conservatives win the general election on December 12. The party has pledged to deliver Brexit by the extension deadline of January 31 as agreed by EU leaders in October.
A source said: “There is deadline January 31 so there is a real and meaningful timetable to resolve this so if [Mr Johnson] can introduce the legislation, get it published formally and give MPs a couple of weeks over Christmas to digest it, which is what they complained about, you can crack on. As soon as you get back it’s all done and dusted in time for January 31.”
The inventor of the World Wide Web today lambasted the Conservatives for renaming a Twitter account “factcheckUK” during a live TV leaders’ debate.
The name is similar to independent fact-checking organisations. Sir Tim Berners-Lee said: “That was impersonation ... don’t trust people who do that.”
Senior Tories have insisted it was clear the feed was from Tory HQ.
