The British Government, in the person of our current Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, has taken steps to radically reduce the time and space available for the UK Parliament to act in line with its function to attempt to make it impossible for the UK to crash out of the European Union without some kind of deal, a so-called “Hard Brexit”.

There are those that would argue that the number of procedural days lost through this extended prorogation of Parliament is only four or five, and that is hardly something to get in a tizzie about, but the bald truth is that the House was increasingly likely to vote down the conference season recess in favour of emergency business with regard to Brexit, and Johnson’s request to the Queen has essentially removed Parliament’s agency to put the country before partisan podium bashing.

In other words, Johnson has used Parliamentary procedure in a way that it has never been used in living memory, in order to subvert the sovereignty of Parliament, a concept that was fundamental to the tissue of lies from the Leave campaign only three short years ago.

I like many other people am incensed by his willingness to depart from convention and fair play to further his grubby little agenda of setting the country on fire in order to egregiously increase the wealth of his cronies and paymasters. These are the true “grey men”. They will use their already vast wealth to successfully bet against the UK in the coming months. They will bet against our currency and our industry, profiting to an unimaginable extent from the misery of the working poor and the undefended as our country’s economy goes into free fall as we plummet from the cliff edge of the Hard Brexit that no one seems to believe can now be avoided.

Truly the 28th of August 2019 will go down in history as an analogue to the burning of the Reichstag, as the moment when democracy was wrenched from the heart of the people and replaced with the stark, cold reality that those who believe themselves to be our betters will tell us how our country will be run.

Here are some photographs from the spontaneous demonstration outside the Palace of Westminster and Downing Street on the evening after the announcement came through.