MPS have voted to make it harder for Boris Johnson to suspend Parliament.
The front runner to be the next Prime Minister has repeatedly refused to rule out prorogation – effectively suspending parliament - in the run up to the October 31 deadline to stop MPs blocking a no-deal Brexit.
On Thursday, the Commons delivered a pre-emptive strike, in a bid to stop the Brexiteer taking the UK out of the EU with no agreement.
Technically it was yet another crushing defeat for Theresa May, with MPs voting 315 to 274, after many Tories MPs, including Chancellor Phillip Hammond and a slew of other ministers abstained.
May lost her digital minister, with Margot James resigning to support the backbench amendment – she was the 51st minister to quit the outgoing PM's Government.
While the amendment to the Northern Ireland (Executive Formation) makes the process of proroguing difficult, it doesn’t not make it impossible.
It will effectively oblige the government to hold a fortnightly debate on the progress being made in getting the Stormont assembly back up and running.
It also means that if Parliament is prorogued when the government publishes reports on the situation in Northern Ireland, MPs must be recalled to debate them.
Speaking in the Commons ahead of the vote, Tory MP and former education secretary Justine Greening said: "What have we come to in Britain when we have to have amendments to ensure Parliament can still operate?
"Firstly you don't win a debate by closing down the main chamber in which the country's people's views are aired and you don't unite a country by muzzling the representatives of people around those communities."
DUP Westminster leader Nigel Dodds said it was "very disconcerting" to see a bill about Northern Ireland "hijacked for other purposes and particularly to see the debates taking place not even on the issues that directly affect Northern Ireland".
Speaking afterwards, the SNP’s Westminster leader, an Blackford said Johnson needed to “stop acting like a tin-pot dictator”.
He added: “Scotland will no longer be ignored by Westminster. Any form of Brexit would be a disaster and crashing out of the EU with no deal at all could cause a recession, destroy 100,000 Scottish jobs and cost every person in the country £2300 a year.”
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