Jenny has a meeting at Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese, frequented by Samuel Johnson and Charles Dickens, and rebuilt shortly after the great fire of 1666. (Haven’ been for some time and must go again). So we choose a coffee spot nearby, The Fleet Street Press, a great name for a coffee shop located on Fleet Street. Had good reviews, and a cosy place, although the wide, shallow cups are ideally suited to cooling coffee as rapidly as possible. Interesting times in parliament.
Conversation both familial and political. The Conservatives have a minority government propped up in a supply and confidence arrangement (which unlike a coalition gives them some agreed bribes but no cabinet positions, and lasts as long as it lasts) by the Northern Irish Democratic Union Party. Bribes notwithstanding, the DUP has reached the point, re Brexit, in which it is no longer willing to support the government in the coming vote on the acceptance of Theresa May’s compromise Brexit deal - a compromise which, unfortunately pleases virtually no one. More immediately, and more interestingly, the house, no longer under government control, has voted to instruct government to publish the full legal advice they have been given re the tentative Brexit agreement. The government has refused - a summary but not the whole advice. The government position, with which Jenny (a former government lawyer, and no Tory) agrees, is that it is a bad precedent, which jeopardises senior civil servants asked for detailed advice. The opposite view is that parliament is sovereign, and in fact the Speaker has said that arguably the government is in contempt of parliament.
And, post script, by the end of the evening, the government has relented and agreed that it will indeed publish the full advice.
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