Britain's Prime Minister Boris Johnson speaks during a news conference with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker after agreeing on the Brexit deal, at the sidelines of the European Union leaders summit, in Brussels, Belgium October 17, 2019. REUTERS/Francois Lenoir
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has indeed pulled off a remarkable coup in securing an agreement on October 17 for Britain to leave the European Union in just two weeks’ time.
But
he now faces some equally daunting challenges. He must either secure immediate
parliamentary approval for his “great new deal” in a vote expected as early as October
19, or face his possible ouster in a no-confidence vote, or be forced to hold a
confirmatory referendum on the deal, or witness the country plunged into a
general election while his deal remains in abeyance.
So
the prime minister has less than forty-eight hours to forge a coalition that
can secure the necessary initial approval of the deal—and Britain’s fractured
politics means the outcome of the vote is far from certain.
Johnson
secured his deal in the early hours of October 17 by effectively agreeing to a
customs and regulatory border between Northern Ireland and the rest of the
United Kingdom. He did this in order to ensure that no such border would
re-emerge between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland that would put
at risk the 1998 Good Friday Agreement that officially ended thirty years of
sectarian and political strife in the North.
In
the process, however, he lost the support of the Democratic Unionist Party
(DUP) of Northern Ireland, and the DUP’s ten MPs at Westminster could well
determine the future of Boris’s deal when it comes before the House of Commons
on October 19.
Johnson
needs to secure 320 votes to win initial approval for the deal. But his ruling
Conservative Party currently numbers just 288 MPs, and a hardline group of
perhaps twenty to twenty-five MPs, dubbed the Spartans, share the DUP’s
concerns that different customs and regulatory regimes in Northern Ireland and
Great Britain threaten the cohesion, and possibly the unity, of the United
Kingdom.
Over
the next couple of days, the Government will exert massive efforts to win over
both the DUP and the Spartans, possibly including pork-barrel promises of fresh
financial aid for Northern Ireland and a combination of threats and promises to
the recalcitrant Conservative Spartans.
But
it also hopes to secure support from two other key groups. One is from the
group of twenty-one former Conservative MPs who were expelled from the party in
September when they backed legislation aimed at ensuring the UK would not be
able to leave the EU on October 31 unless a deal was first agreed. The other
group are some ten to twenty Brexit-inclined opposition Labour MPs who
represent areas that voted ‘Leave’ in the advisory referendum on Brexit held in
2016.
At
present—and who knows what may happen before voting actually takes place—it
looks as if Johnson will go down to defeat if he seeks to secure approval for
his deal in an un-amended form.
But
a change of policy by opposition Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn on October 17 has
changed the arithmetic concerning a key potential amendment to the bill
required to get the deal through parliament. Corbyn declared on October 17:
“The best way to get Brexit sorted is to give the people the final say in a
public vote.” This makes it likely that the House of Commons will not only seek
to tack on a compulsory second referendum to the Government’s legislation, but
that such an amendment will actually pass since it would be backed not only by
Labour and the Scottish and Welsh Nationalists, but also by many of the former
Conservative Party independents.
If
Johnson’s deal goes down to a straight defeat, much will depend on the prime minister’s
immediate response. If he accepts defeat with a modicum of grace and conforms
to the no-deal legislation passed in September, he will immediately send a
letter to the European Commission asking for an extension to the departure
timetable to the end of January 2020.
In
such a case, he might well face immediate opprobrium from his own supporters
for failing to deliver on his consistently repeated promise that the UK would
leave the EU on October 31. But he could—and in all probability would—then call
a general election for late November or early December. Since Johnson, like his
presidential namesake in the United States, certainly understands political counting,
this may not be just a default position but an actual strategic objective:
force the opposition to vote his deal down and take his case to the people that
it is the opposition, and not the prime minister, that has failed to deliver
Brexit on time.
However,
Johnson also faces the possibility of losing a confidence vote. The Scottish
National Party has already said it will call one if the Government loses a vote
on the deal, and other opposition parties might well support it if Johnson is
either reluctant to send the required letter to Brussels or seems to be maneuvering
to find some way of circumventing its provisions in order to ensure that the UK
does indeed leave the EU on October 31—but without a deal.
There
are still all sorts of loose ends to be tied up. While the heads of government gathered in
Brussels for the European Council meeting on October 17 and 18 gave their
formal blessing to the deal, the UK Parliament and the European Union
Parliament have to sign off on the details of a vastly complicated set of
arrangements that would unravel forty-five years of British membership of a
host of European institutions.
As
for the deal itself, while Johnson can certainly claim credit for securing a
last-minute agreement, its details may well contribute to a further fracturing
of British politics. In particular, Labour and the nationalist parties consider
that workers’ rights and conditions are threatened because an accompanying
political statement makes it clear that the Johnson Government will no longer
work to secure a customs agreement with the EU, the goal of his predecessor
Theresa May, but a free trade agreement that would allow the UK to set its own
standards and regulations.
So
the UK awaits the start of a great debate on October 19—and wonders just what
might happen in the meantime.
John M. Roberts is a UK-based senior fellow in the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center and Global Energy Center.
Further reading
Tue, Oct 15, 2019
There’s a Brexit countdown in progress, but whether it’s counted in hours in order to end at midnight on October 16 or in days to end at midnight on Halloween is anybody’s guess.
New Atlanticist
by
John M. Roberts
Sun, Sep 22, 2019
Just two years after Scots narrowly rejected independence by referendum, a second bite at the apple―IndyRef2―is being widely discussed, and one recent opinion pollshows it leading to a pro-independence result.
Long Take
by
Andrew R. Marshall
Tue, Oct 1, 2019
While London and Hong Kong will continue to play outsized roles in international business, their privileged status may be more precarious than it seems.
New Atlanticist
by
Michael B. Greenwald
The prime minister has less than forty-eight hours to forge a coalition that can secure the necessary initial approval of the deal—and Britain’s fractured politics means the outcome of the vote is far from certain.
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