Recall parliament to tackle crisis: Labour

Britain’s parliament needs to be recalled immediately to discuss Brexit, the opposition Labour Party’s finance spokesman John McDonnell said yesterday, after leaked official documents forecast possible food, fuel, and medicine shortages.

Britain has less than 74 days to resolve a three-year crisis that is pitting the country against the EU, its closest trade partner, and parliament against the executive. The outcome will mark its most significant geopolitical move since World War Two.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson says Britain will leave the European Union, with or without a transition deal, on October 31. His calls for the EU to renegotiate the existing exit deal have so far been rejected in Brussels.

That puts Britain on course for an unmanaged exit, which an official assessment published by the Sunday Times said would jam ports, increase the risk of public protests and severely disrupt the world’s fifth-largest economy.

McDonnell, the Labour Party’s second most powerful man, said that the looming crisis demanded parliament’s summer break be brought to an early end.

“There’s a need now to bring MPs (members of parliament) back together again because we need time now to really have a proper debate and discussion about this,” McDonnell, a close ally of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, told BBC radio.