New failure for Boris Johnson Monday 9th September before the suspension of Parliament as he wished. The Prime Minister categorically refuses a new postponement of Brexit.
The British MP’s once again Monday 9th September 2019 inflicted a snub to Prime Minister Boris Johnson refusing once again to trigger early elections. Parliament is now suspended until the 14th October, just two weeks before the planned Brexit date.
With 293 votes in favour, far from two-thirds of the seats required to call a general election, MPs defeated for the second time in five days Boris Johnson’s proposal that voters be called to the polls on October 15.
“No new report” claims Boris Johnson
Before the vote, the head of government assured that he would not request “a further postponement” of the Brexit, scheduled for October 31st, despite a law that came into effect Monday after the approval of Queen Elizabeth II.
Remedy, resignation or otherwise, Boris Johnson did not explain how he intends to go about it.
“If you want a deadline, then vote for a general election! He told opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn, who he said fears he will be defeated at the polls. He retorted that he wanted an election, but refused to “risk the disaster” of leaving the EU without agreement.
Before any vote, the opposition wants to ensure that the prospect of a “no-deal” is removed and that the Brexit will be postponed by three months, as Parliament voted last week.
This text obliges the Prime Minister to request this postponement to the EU if he does not get an exit agreement by October 19, just after a European summit.
Speaker of the House of Commons resigns
The camouflets have succeeded one week for Boris Johnson. On Monday early in the evening, the House of Commons adopted a text to force the government to publish confidential documents on the impact of a Brexit without an agreement, which the executive is suspected of downplaying.
Monday’s sitting in the House of Commons was the last before the controversial parliamentary suspension of five weeks by Boris Johnson.
In the codified ceremony marking the suspension of Parliament, in an electric atmosphere and in the midst of the acrimonious chants and protests of the opposition, Speaker of the House of Commons John Bercow stressed that this “prorogation”, “the longest since decades, “was neither” classic “nor” normal “.
After ten years in the “speaker” chair, John Bercow announced in the afternoon that he would resign on October 31st.
Accused in recent months by supporters of a Brexit hard to have overstepped parliamentary regulations to their detriment, he, his eyes misted, hailed the sense of “national interest” members of the House.
Parliament’s suspension, denounced by John Bercow as a “constitutional scandal”, sparked a wave of indignation in the UK, where opponents suspect Boris Johnson of manoeuvring to prevent MPs from debating Brexit and rushing the country towards a divorce without an agreement with the European Union.
Tensions with Ireland
Boris Johnson assured Monday still want an agreement, but Brussels and London can not agree on how to keep open the border in Ireland after Brexit.
“Common ground has been found in some areas but significant differences remain,” according to a joint statement issued after a meeting of Boris Johnson with Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar in Dublin.
According to Leo Varadkar, London has yet to submit any “realistic” alternative proposal to Ireland’s “backstop”, which Boris Johnson wants to remove from the withdrawal agreement negotiated by his predecessor Theresa May.
This provision aims to prevent the return to a physical border between Northern Ireland, a British province, and the Republic of Ireland, a Member State of the European Union. It foresees that, for lack of a better solution after a transitional period, the whole United Kingdom remains in a “single customs territory” with the EU, which would prevent it from following an independent commercial policy.
Boris Johnson is fiercely opposed to any further postponement of Brexit, originally scheduled for March 29th and already postponed twice, if no compromise is found. He reiterated Monday his determination to leave the European club at any price on October 31st, under penalty of inflicting a “permanent damage” to the British confidence in democracy, after the referendum of 2016 which settled at 52% for the Brexit.
Any new deadline will still have to be unanimously approved by the other 27 member states of the European Union.
Elections could allow the prime minister to recover the majority he lost by excluding 21 rebel MPs, who voted with the opposition for the postponement of Brexit, and with the defection of another last week for the Europhile party Liberal Democrats.
On Saturday again, he suffered another snub with the resignation of a heavyweight from his government, Labor Minister Amber Rudd, after that of his own brother, Jo Johnson.
