Johnson's defiance has prompted an unprecedented battle in the House of Commons, where he has lost every vote since becoming Prime Minister in July.HO/AFP/Getty Images
Britain is facing weeks of growing uncertainty after Prime Minister Boris Johnson lost his second bid to trigger an early election, forcing him either to negotiate a deal with the European Union or to confront the prospect of breaking the law in order to fulfill his pledge of leaving the EU on Oct. 31.
A tumultuous week in the House of Commons ended Monday night with the Queen proroguing Parliament until Oct. 14 at Mr. Johnson’s request after MPs would not give him the required consent to call an early election. The Prime Minister remained undaunted and refused to back down from his commitment to leave on Halloween, no matter what. “I will go to Brussels … and negotiate our departure on the 31st of October, hopefully with a deal but without one if necessary,” he told MPs. “I will not ask for another delay.”
His defiance has prompted an unprecedented battle in the House of Commons, where Mr. Johnson has lost every vote since becoming Prime Minister in July and seen his government’s working majority evaporate thanks in part to his decision to expel 21 Conservative MPs who sided with the opposition.
Explainer: Where are we at with Brexit?
The indecision over Brexit has also prompted new fears about the economy after figures released on Monday showed economic growth had ground to a halt.
Labour Party Leader Jeremy Corbyn said Mr. Johnson had no mandate to push for a no-deal Brexit and that it would be a disaster for the country. “'No deal’ would not be a clean break; it would not mean just getting on with it; it would start a whole new period of confusion and delay,” Mr. Corbyn told MPs during a debate Monday.
With Parliament no longer sitting, Mr. Johnson is expected to turn his attention to reaching a deal with the EU. But time is running out and no negotiations have been scheduled. He’s also been hamstrung by a group of opposition and Conservative MPs who have passed a law that requires him to seek an extension of the deadline if he hasn’t reached a deal by Oct. 19. Mr. Johnson has toyed with finding a way around the law, but legal experts doubt he has much room to manoeuvre and argue he would have to comply.
Mr. Johnson took a tentative step toward starting negotiations on Monday during a meeting in Dublin with Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar. He dropped his tough talk about a no-deal Brexit and said that leaving the EU without an agreement “would be a failure of statecraft for which we would all be responsible.” While he added that his government had “an abundance of proposals” for an agreement, he failed to make any details public.
To get a deal, Mr. Johnson must find a way to resolve the thorny issue of the Irish border. The EU negotiated a deal with his predecessor, Theresa May, that included a backstop provision that would have kept the border open by aligning Northern Ireland to EU regulations and keeping the rest of the United Kingdom within a form of the bloc’s customs union.
That agreement was not approved by Parliament and Mr. Johnson has said that he wants the backstop scrapped because it ties Britain too closely with the EU. He says there are other alternatives that could be employed to keep the border open, such as the kind of technology that’s used along parts of the Canada-U.S. border.
The EU has argued that the Irish border, with its network of hundreds of crossings and no visible frontier, is unlike any border in the world, which is why the backstop is needed. Mr. Varadkar reiterated that position on Monday, telling reporters: "In the absence of agreed alternative arrangements, no backstop is no deal for us. We are open to alternatives, but they must realistic ones, legally binding and workable and we haven’t received such proposals to date.”
Mr. Johnson has mentioned the possibility of an all-island arrangement that would keep Northern Ireland largely aligned to the EU, but not the rest of the U.K. Ms. May had initially proposed that idea, but her allies in Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party rejected the proposal as it would cut the province off from the rest of the country. It’s not clear how Mr. Johnson would overcome similar objections since the DUP has been crucial in propping up the Conservative’s minority government.
There has also been speculation that Mr. Johnson could comply with the no-deal law by formally asking the EU for an extension but then sending a second document outlining why Britain didn’t want extra time. Legal experts said that would not conform to the law and would likely be illegal.
Mr. Johnson could also lobby at least one EU member state to veto the extension request, which would scupper a delay since any extension requires the unanimous consent of EU members.
Mr. Johnson did get some relief in Parliament on Monday. The Speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow, announced that he will resign on Oct. 31 and not seek re-election as an MP. Mr. Bercow, who has been Speaker for a decade, has become something of a social-media superstar for his unmistakable shout of “Order, order” and his clever put-downs of noisy MPs with a boisterous “Calm yourself” and “Get a grip of yourself, man.”
He has also earned the wrath of many Conservatives who have accused him of trying to thwart Brexit by favouring the opposition. In a tearful statement on Monday, Mr. Bercow told MPs that he’d always acted in the best interests of parliamentary democracy and he added: "I will make absolutely no apology to anyone, anywhere, at any time. … To deploy a perhaps dangerous phrase, I have also sought to be the backbencher’s backstop.”
Paul Waldie