Premier’s party suffers defeat; majority cut to 1
LONDON — British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Brexit-backing Conservative Party lost a special election Friday to a proEU opposition candidate, leaving Johnson with only a onevote majority in Parliament as the United Kingdom’s departure from the European Union looms.
In the Conservatives’ first electoral test since Johnson became prime minister last month on a vow to complete Brexit “do or die,” the party was defeated for the seat of Brecon and Radnorshire in Wales by Jane Dodds of the Liberal Democrats. Dodds won 43% of the vote, against 39% for Conservative Chris Davies, who fought to retain the seat after being convicted and fined for expenses fraud.
Dodds urged the prime minister to rule out leaving the EU without a divorce agreement, saying “a nodeal Brexit would be a disaster” for agricultural areas like her constituency some 175 miles west of London.
Sheep farmers in Wales worry that, without a Brexit deal, steep tariffs on lamb exports will devastate their business.
Johnson won a Conservative Party leadership race by vowing that Britain will leave the European Union on Oct. 31, with or without a divorce deal. But he faces opposition from Parliament, and the byelection result makes it even harder for the government to pass laws and win votes in the 90 days before the Brexit deadline.
The outcome also reflects the seismic effect Britain’s decision three years ago to leave the 28nation EU has had on the country’s politics, with voters increasingly split into proBrexit and proEU camps.
The centrist Liberal Democrats have seen their support surge because of their call for Britain to remain in the bloc. In European Parliament elections in May, the party took 20% of votes, trouncing both the Conservatives and the main opposition Labor Party, whose leadership is divided over Brexit.
Labor won just 5% of the votes in Brecon. The Liberal Democrats made a pact with two other proEU parties, which did not run to give Dodds a better chance.
The Conservatives, meanwhile, lost support to the Brexit Party led by longtime Euroskeptic figurehead Nigel Farage, which took 10% of the votes.
The Conservatives lack an overall majority in the House of Commons, and rely on an alliance with 10 lawmakers from Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party. The loss of the Brecon seat leaves the governing alliance with 320 of the 639 voting lawmakers — the bare minimum needed to carry votes.
Johnson insists that he wants a Brexit deal, but is demanding that the EU make major changes to the divorce agreement it struck with his predecessor Theresa May, which was rejected three times by Britain’s Parliament. The EU is adamant that it won’t renegotiate.