United Kingdom: Parliament defies Boris on Brexit
“Rarely has a U.K. prime minister’s strategy imploded so rapidly,” said the Financial Times in an editorial. Boris Johnson entered office in July with a pledge to get Britain out of the European Union by Oct. 31, with or without an exit deal to govern trade and our myriad entanglements with the bloc. Johnson hoped that his no-deal threat—which would cause backups at ports and force a hard border between EU member Ireland and the U.K. province of Northern Ireland—would frighten the EU into offering last-minute concessions. But his hard-line tactics have backfired spectacularly. In a single week, he has “collapsed his own working majority from 1 to minus 43” by expelling from the party the 21 principled Conservatives who voted in favor of legislation barring a destructive no-deal Brexit, including “the grandson of his political hero, Winston Churchill.” Two cabinet members, including Boris’ brother Jo Johnson, quickly quit in disgust. Johnson is now bound by law to either secure a deal with the EU by Oct. 19 or ask for an extension. Yet he says he would rather be “dead in a ditch” than request another delay—and he has offered no new ideas for a revised deal.
Johnson is behaving with the “ruthlessness” of a mob boss, said Nick Cohen in The Observer. In an attempt to sideline Parliament, he ordered the legislature to go on a monthlong break— a decision Scotland’s high court has now ruled unlawful. Before the suspension began this week, opposition lawmakers and rebel Conservatives united to rush through the bill to block a no-deal Brexit. With no majority in the House of Commons, Johnson needs a snap election and to win public backing for his agenda. But lawmakers have refused to let him call an election before Oct. 31, because if he secured a majority he could tear up the no-deal law.
The prime minister “is fighting to save, not wreck, democracy,” said Robert Colvile in The Times. The British people voted 52 to 48 percent to leave the EU in the 2016 referendum. And polls show that, despite constant warnings about the very real economic risks of a no-deal Brexit, they haven’t changed their minds in sufficient numbers to invalidate the result. Boris’ dedication to delivering Brexit “come what may—and straining every sinew to do so—is neither unprincipled nor unscrupulous.”
The prime minister still has some cards up his sleeve, said Katy Balls in The Guardian. If he can’t secure a fresh deal with the EU that Parliament will support, he could try to trigger a new election by calling a confidence vote in himself. Ministers are adamant that Johnson won’t ask for a Brexit extension, so if opposition lawmakers refuse to vote him out of office, Boris could resign in mid-October rather than go begging to Brussels. A caretaker administration led by Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn might then be appointed. It would have to ask the EU for an extension—which Conservatives could use as campaign fodder in an eventual election to argue the leftist Corbyn had foiled the people’s will. “In the topsy-turvy world of Brexit, the unthinkable is now possible.”