Britain's Prime Minister Boris Johnson leaves Downing Street to head for the House of Commons as parliament discusses Brexit, sitting on a Saturday for the first time since the 1982 Falklands War, in London, Britain, October 19, 2019. REUTERS/Simon Dawson
British Prime Minister
Boris Johnson on October 19 lost a crucial parliamentary vote to secure
Britain’s exit from the European Union on October 31, triggering an immediate
constitutional crisis when he signaled he would obey the letter of the law but
defy it in practice.
The House of Commons
voted by 322 votes to 306 for an amendment that forces the Government to
postpone a decisive vote on the Brexit deal he negotiated forty-eight hours
until Parliament has conducted full scrutiny of the actual enabling
legislation.
Johnson had hoped to
secure a decisive vote at the end of the debate on October 19, so that he could
then deliver on his ‘do-or-die’ promise that the UK would leave the EU on
October 31.
The amendment
championed by former Conservative cabinet minister Oliver Letwin meant that by
midnight October 19 Johnson was due to send a letter to the European Commission
requesting a Brexit extension to the end of January 2020. Initially, Johnson
indicated to Parliament that he would not send such a letter. He told
Parliament after the vote: “I will not negotiate a delay with the EU. And
neither does the law compel me to do so.” However, Johnson’s aides subsequently
briefed that a letter would be sent, but that the Prime Minister would make it
clear to the European Commission that he would be doing so under duress from Parliament.
After that, the prime minister’s
office on Downing Street fell silent, possibly because Johnson faces an
immediate charge of contempt of court from the Court of Session, Scotland’s
highest court, if he fails to send the letter, since government lawyers, in an
ongoing case, have already promised the court that the prime minister would
both abide by the law and that he would not seek to frustrate the principle of
the law.
After the vote, Johnson
also declared “I will not seek a delay.” His ministers then announced the Government
will hold a further vote on Monday October 21 on the deal Johnson negotiated.
But there was confusion as to whether this meant it would be introducing a
formal withdrawal bill in the hope that it could secure passage through Parliament
in just ten days in order to comply both with the Letwin amendment and with
Johnson’s own promises or whether there might be a vote on October 21 while the
actual bill was introduced the next day.
The October 19 vote
proved that Parliament as a whole wants to ensure it can properly scrutinize
the legislation. But it also appears to indicate that there is probably an
underlying majority for the deal Johnson negotiated, since a number of MPs,
including Letwin himself and most of the other twenty Conservatives expelled
from the party for supporting the original legislation that set up the October
19 amendment, have said they are prepared to support it once they are assured
that there will be full debate on the sixty-four pages of changes to the
original 585-page withdrawal agreement negotiated by Johnson’s predecessor
Theresa May a year ago.
The biggest changes are
likely to be the subject of considerable further acrimony. The revised
agreement provides for a de facto customs and regulatory border between the
mainland of Great Britain and the UK province of Northern Ireland so that there
is no need for a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of
Ireland.
But this decision,
agreed in order to prevent any return to violence in Ireland over the question
of whether Northern Ireland should remain a British province or should join the
Irish Republic, was the primary reason why the ten members of Northern
Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party, generally an ally of the Conservatives,
voted against the government on the Letwin amendment.
The other major change
is that the Johnson deal enables the UK to set its own standards for such key
issues as workers’ rights and environmental standards, whereas the May
agreement required these to remain aligned with those of the EU in order to
facilitate mutual trade in future. These issues provoked intense anger from the
opposition Labour Party, with party leader Jeremy Corbyn accusing Johnson of
triggering a “race to the bottom” by seeking to reduce, rather than improve,
working conditions and environmental safeguards.
In a day that has
created as much uncertainty as any other in the four-year long saga of
Britain’s proposed exit from the EU, Johnson actually managed to trigger not
one but two constitutional crises.
Scotland’s chief
minister Nicola Sturgeon. addressing the annual conference of her ruling
Scottish National Party, said on October 15 that she would seek to open
negotiations with the British government in London before the end of the year
in order to hold a second referendum on Scottish independence in 2020.
But on October 19
Johnson effectively ruled out such a vote, saying that when a previous
Conservative government agreed to hold an independence referendum in 2014,
“they were told it was a once-in-a-generation decision, and I see no reason
whatever to betray that promise that was made to them then.”
The October 19 vote
means that the European Commission will now have to work out how to respond to
the letter Johnson is due to send them. They have announced they will meet in
Brussels on October 20 to discuss their answer. But the Johnson Government, and
Parliament as a whole, may also feel an increasing need to take other
developments into account. As they debated the issue of the Britain’s
withdrawal in the House of Commons, hundreds of thousands of people—the organizers
estimated a full million—were taking part in a protest march in London to
demand that the Johnson deal be put to a further referendum, with the ballot
paper also including an option to remain.
They may just get their way, since one consequence of the Letwin amendment is that further scrutiny of the bill before Britain actually exits the European Union will enable more amendments to be put to the enabling legislation. And there will certainly be moves to attach a confirmatory referendum to the actual bill.
John M. Roberts is a UK-based senior fellow in the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center and Global Energy Center.
In a day that has created as much uncertainty as any other in the four-year long saga of Britain’s proposed exit from the EU, Johnson actually managed to trigger not one but two constitutional crises.
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