The British Parliament has taken control of the Brexit debate and is challenging Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s “do or die” plan to get Britain out of the European Union on Oct. 31. Here is what we know.
● Parliament is debating and voting on a bill to avoid a “no-deal Brexit” and delay Britain’s departure three more months. The bill is widely expected to pass.
● Johnson faced the first “Prime Minister Questions” of his career and called for an election on Oct. 15. He is not expected to get sufficient parliamentary support for that on Wednesday.
● He has purged his party of rebels, including grandson of his idol, Winston Churchill.
LONDON — A day after a devastating defeat in Parliament, a defiant Prime Minister Boris Johnson returned to the House of Commons on Wednesday to try to salvage his Brexit plans or force a general election next month.
“Let’s get Brexit done,” he said in his first “Prime Minister’s Questions” session since taking office nearly six weeks ago.
Johnson portrayed himself as a “sensible, moderate and Conservative” leader who wanted to deliver Brexit by an Oct. 31 deadline, and he accused his opponents of “dither, delay and confusion” that would guarantee more years of debate and uncertainty about Brexit.
“What we want to do in this government is deliver the mandate of the people,” he said, calling an opposition bill to delay Brexit by three months a “wretched surrender bill.”
He called for a vote on that bill and, if it passes as expected, to “put it to the will of the people in the form of a general election,” meaning polls for all 650 seats in the House of Commons three years earlier than previously scheduled.
It was a fiery performance by a prime minister facing a growing rebellion in his Conservative Party and opposition leaders emboldened by their newfound leverage. Johnson risks seeing his bold moves to realize an Oct. 31 Brexit fall into the same quagmire that sunk his predecessor, Theresa May.
Johnson is trying to quell the rebellion against him and make the case for a swift and certain Brexit, a pledge upon which he has bet his job.
Johnson said neither he nor the British people want another general election, which would be the third in five years. But he said voters may have to decide whether they want him or his chief opponent, Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, negotiating the terms of Brexit with European Union leaders.
Corbyn shot back at Johnson in Parliament on Wednesday, accusing him of “incompetence.”
“If the prime minister does to the country what he has done to his party in the past 24 hours, I think a lot of people have a great deal to fear from his incompetence and his vacillation,” Corbyn said.
Johnson has demanded that Britain end three years of uncertainty over Brexit by leaving the E.U. by the Halloween deadline, even if that means a no-deal exit without agreements in place to regulate trade and other matters.
Most members of Parliament, even those who support Brexit, disagree with Johnson on that issue. Debate in Parliament on Tuesday centered on fears over a no-deal exit that even government officials predict would lead to food and medicine shortages and other catastrophic economic and social problems.
Johnson on Wednesday called that “Project Fear” and said those warnings were “shameless scaremongering.”
For days, Britons have been protesting in the streets around Parliament and Johnson’s office at 10 Downing Street. Many are anti-Brexit, while others are angry at the prime minister for pushing the no-deal option and for planning to shutter Parliament for five weeks leading up to the Oct. 31 deadline.
“We have seized back control of Parliament from a prime minister who is behaving more like a dictator than a democrat,” said Ian Blackford, a member of the Scottish National Party.
Johnson said that a no-deal Brexit, no matter how difficult, would be better than electing Corbyn and sending him to Brussels to negotiate. “He will beg for an extension, he will accept whatever Brussels demands, and we’ll have years more arguments over Brexit,” Johnson said.
After his defeat Tuesday night, Johnson introduced legislation setting the stage for elections. But it is far from clear this will happen. Two-thirds of the 650 members of the House of Commons must vote to hold elections, and Johnson’s opponents want concessions from him before they agree to a national vote.
Support from the Labour Party’s 247 members in the chamber is critical to reaching a two-thirds vote. Johnson lost Tuesday’s key procedural vote 328 to 301, a margin that included 21 Conservatives who voted against their own prime minister.
After the Conservative defections, the party now has 289 members of Parliament. Independents are suddenly the third-largest bloc, with 36 members.
A grab from a handout video made available by the Parliamentary Recording Unit shows Jacob Rees-Mogg, leader of the House of Commons, lounging in his seat during a debate in London, Sept. 3 2019 (Handout/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock)
“Tonight we defeated Boris Johnson in his first Commons test and tomorrow we will legislate against his disastrous No Deal plans,” Corbyn tweeted Tuesday.
Wednesday morning, Labour’s chief Brexit negotiator, Keir Starmer, told the BBC that the party will not “dance to Boris Johnson’s tune.”
The immediate issue in Parliament Wednesday will be a bill to seek a three-month delay in Brexit and ensure that a no-deal Brexit does not happen.
Corbyn and his lieutenants have said they welcome a chance to defeat the mercurial prime minister in national elections. But they insist on passing the bill and preventing the no-deal exit first.
Labour Party officials also said they need a guarantee that the elections would be held before Oct. 31, to prevent a no-deal Brexit from happening by default on that day.
In Parliament on Wednesday, Johnson called Corbyn a “chicken” for placing conditions on agreeing to elections. He used a joke referring to British fears about how poultry is processed in the United States.
“I know he’s worried about free trade deals with America, but there’s only one chlorinated chicken that I can see in this House, and he’s on that bench,” Johnson said, to the delight of his own side.
Johnson’s opponents have said they fear he would agree to an October election date, then delay it until after Britain “crashes out” of the E.U. without a deal.
“There’s a real problem with Johnson, and it’s a problem Theresa May didn’t have,” Starmer, the Labour Brexit negotiator, said on Sky News. “People disagreed with Theresa May, but when she stood at the dispatch box and said something, she meant it and she was trusted.
“Johnson is not trusted,” he said. “Even if he says the election will be on the 15th of October, most people in Parliament won’t believe him. This is his central problem.”
Johnson won one victory Wednesday morning in one of several legal cases that have been filed over his decision to suspend Parliament for five weeks. A judge in Scotland’s highest civil court on Wednesday ruled that the decision was lawful, but those who brought the case — 75 lawmakers — could appeal. There are similar legal challenges in Northern Ireland and in England.
Johnson’s other urgent problem is a raging rebellion from members of his own party, whose defection Tuesday allowed the opposition to bring the Brexit-delay legislation to the floor on Wednesday.
One after another, Conservative members of Parliament stood to denounce Johnson’s Brexit plans — and Johnson himself — during a passionate debate in which people said Britain’s democracy and future were at stake.
Johnson responded ruthlessly, kicking all the rebels out of the party, making it impossible for them to run as Conservatives in any upcoming election. He hopes to replace them with candidates more loyal to him.
But Johnson’s move excommunicated some of the grandest and most respected figures in the party, including two former chancellors of the exchequer, or finance ministers: Kenneth Clarke and Philip Hammond.
Also banished, remarkably, was Nicholas Soames, 71, former prime minister Winston Churchill’s grandson, who has served in Parliament for 37 years. Johnson idolizes Churchill and wrote a biography of him.
Bafflement over that stunning expulsion was summed up by Ruth Davidson, who stood down as the Conservatives’ leader in Scotland last week.
“How, in the name of all that is good and holy, is there no longer room in the Conservative Party” for Soames, she tweeted, using the hashtag: #anofficerandagentleman.
On the BBC after the vote, Soames sounded as stoic as his grandfather: “That’s fortunes of war,” he said. “I knew what I was doing, but I just believe that they are not playing straight with us.”
The Victoria Tower, where all the original documents created in over 500 years of the British Houses of Parliament are kept, is seen from College Green, the center for the political media in London on Sept. 3, 2019. (Tolga Akmen/AFP/Getty Images)
Rory Stewart, the former international development secretary, said he was informed of his expulsion by text message on Tuesday night. At the time, he was receiving an award for “politician of the year.” There was a “real irony” in the timing, he told the BBC on Wednesday.
Stewart said he would nonetheless still try to run as a Conservative in future elections. “This is a passing phase in the history of the Conservative Party. I have to believe that this way of behaving is not a Conservative way of behaving,” he said.
A dramatic highlight of Tuesday’s parliamentary session came as Johnson was addressing the body and Conservative lawmaker Phillip Lee dramatically crossed the chamber to defect to the Liberal Democrats. He explained in a statement that Johnson’s party had become “infected with the twin diseases of populism and English nationalism.”
Lee’s move stripped Johnson of his single-vote working majority in the House of Commons, making it all but impossible for him to enact legislation and increasing his incentive to ask the nation’s voters for a mandate.
“He has no plan to get a new deal, no authority and no majority,” Corbyn said Wednesday in Parliament.
Jo Swinson, the Liberal Democrat leader, said Wednesday that she has been talking with other disaffected Conservatives and believes more would defect to her party.
“There’s a lot of MPs who are looking to see where the sense in British politics can come from, where we can really stop the chaos that is Brexit, and fight for a much better future for our country that people do not see under Boris Johnson or Jeremy Corbyn,” she said.
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