Why is Theresa May able to ask the House of Commons to vote on the same deal over and over again?
Analysis: As the prime minister confirms that she intends to put her Brexit deal to parliament next week for a third time, John Rentoul looks at the rules
Chris Bryant, the Labour MP and historian of parliament, insists that the rules of the House of Commons prevent the prime minister from repeatedly putting the same proposal to the vote.
He tabled an amendment that “ordered” the government not to put its Brexit deal to a further vote of MPs next week. In it he quotes the authority on parliamentary procedure, Erskine May: “A motion or an amendment which is the same, in substance, as a question which has been decided during a session may not be brought forward again during that same session.”
The problem is that, as Captain Barbossa explained when Keira Knightley tried to appeal to the pirate code in the Pirates of the Caribbean sequel, “the code is more what you’d call guidelines than actual rules”.
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