Queen Gets Drawn Into Drama Over Brexit

(Bloomberg) --

Prime Minister Boris Johnson is on a collision course with U.K. lawmakers with his bid to suspend Parliament shortly after it reconvenes next month.

The move is ostensibly to allow Queen Elizabeth to lay out the government’s program in a speech on Oct. 14. But it also serves to deny lawmakers the time to pass legislation that could prevent Johnson from quitting the European Union on Oct. 31 without a deal. While there has long been talk of the gambit, the pound plunged on the announcement.

Johnson sees the threat of no deal as a bargaining chip in the standoff with the EU over negotiating Brexit. British lawmakers from all parties regard efforts to suspend Parliament as an attempt to circumvent the democratic process to achieve the aims of hard Brexiteers in the Conservative Party and cabinet.

They won’t willingly be silenced. Some have talked of simply continuing to meet in another building, and defying the government. Parliament has passed measures aimed at forcing the government to let it convene. The response of a group of former Tory ministers is key.

What’s clear is the U.K. faces a period of sustained constitutional trauma. After a relatively calm summer, Brexit is about to get real.

Global Headlines

Not bending | Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro is in a very public dust-up with his French counterpart as the Amazon rainforest burns, and he faces criticism from celebrities, sports teams, NGOs and indigenous groups at home and abroad. And yet he remains defiant. Why? As Simone Iglesias and Bruce Douglas explain, Bolsonaro’s view on the Amazon goes back decades, to when his father joined tens of thousands of other wildcat miners to scour for gold at Serra Pelada.

On tenterhooks | Italian President Sergio Mattarella holds crunch talks today with political leaders in a bid to secure a governing coalition. An awkward alliance of the populist Five Star Movement and the center-left Democratic Party is the best chance to avert a snap election that could see anti-immigration hardliner Matteo Salvini take charge of one of the most toxic piles of government debt in Europe.

Corporate alarm | China’s new so-called social credit monitoring system could put some firms out of business and require a large global company to deal with some 30 different ratings and compliance records based on roughly 300 criteria, the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China said in a report. It said there’s no guarantee the ratings won’t be used to target specific companies with greater scrutiny.

Senate stop sign | Democratic 2020 presidential contenders are jousting over who can best save the planet. But even if one of them wins the White House, the Senate — as long as it remains in Republican hands — likely would scuttle even incremental steps to ease the effects of climate change. Still, the candidates are forging ahead with their proposals because the environment is a top issue among primary voters, Sahil Kapur writes.

• Farmers seeking government assistance and U.S. airlines opposed to subsidies for foreign competitors are using ads on Donald Trump’s favored network — Fox News — to make their case.
• Trump, though overwhelmingly favored to win the Republican nomination, ridiculed three GOP opponents who are running or might run against him as the “Three Stooges.”
• Just In: Facebook announced it would require additional information from political advertisers ahead of the election.

Saudi lobbying | A younger brother of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is in Washington as Trump signals new openness to potential talks with Iran — Saudi Arabia’s rival — and reports emerge the U.S. could enter discussions with Iran-backed Houthi rebels in the festering war in Yemen. Deputy Defense Minister Khalid bin Salman meets today with Secretary of State Michael Pompeo.

What to Watch

• Malaysian prosecutors will seek to prove that former premier Najib Razak acted together with fugitive financier Jho Low in their alleged roles in troubled state fund 1MDB. Najib is facing 25 charges in the trial that kicked off today.
• India’s Supreme Court today agreed to examine the constitutional validity of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s decision to scrap Kashmir’s autonomy, but refused to immediately lift a state-wide lockdown on communications and movement.
• Puerto Rico is bracing for Tropical Storm Dorian, with heavy rains that could flood low-level areas but not the exceptionally high winds of two years ago when Hurricane Maria battered the U.S. commonwealth.

And finally....South Korea is spending billions a year, including on “baby celebration packages,” to encourage people to have more children in a country that has the lowest birth rate in the OECD. But there’s little to show for it: South Korea’s fertility rate fell to 0.98 in 2018, while the number of babies born last year fell 8.7% from a year earlier. As in many other countries, people are simply starting their families later.
 

--With assistance from Karl Maier, Kathleen Hunter and Ruth Pollard.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Rosalind Mathieson at rmathieson3@bloomberg.net

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