LONDON, Sept 9, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson will try
to save his job and his hardline Brexit strategy Monday when he confronts
parliament and his Irish counterpart in another showdown week.
The charismatic but divisive British leader finds himself facing a
political impasse, just six weeks after taking over from his beleaguered
predecessor Theresa May.
The new prime minister has vowed to take Britain out of the European Union
after 46 years — with or without a divorce deal — by October 31, but has
been blocked by parliament.
Johnson’s bid to break the deadlock through a snap general election on
October 15 is also facing an almost certain second successive defeat by
lawmakers Monday.
It comes after a week in which he took a battering from resignations and
sackings that included his own brother and Winston Churchill’s grandson,
leaving him without a working majority in parliament.
Two of his most senior ministers both rejected speculation Sunday that
Johnson had no real option but to resign.
But neither could say clearly how he intended to keep all his Brexit
promises without somehow bending UK law.
“Of course he is not going to break the law,” Foreign Minister Dominic Raab
told Sky News.
“We have a plan, which is to stick to what we have been doing,” Interior
Minister Sajid Javid told the BBC.
– ‘It’s no!’ –
The chaos is being compounded by Johnson’s decision to suspend parliament
for over a month from some point between Monday and Thursday.
The legal but controversial step was meant to remove domestic obstacles
while he uses his “no-deal” Brexit threat to wrest better divorce terms from
Brussels at a leadership summit on October 17-18.
But it ended up jolting parliament into racing through legislation forcing
Johnson to ask for what would be a third Brexit extension if no new deal
emerges by October 19.
Raab said Johnson would “test to the limit” the law in court.
European leaders are also sceptical that another delay designed to avoid
economic disruption was still worth all the political pain.
“In the current circumstances, it’s ‘no!’,” French Foreign Minister Jean-
Yves Le Drian told a Sunday political talk show in Paris.
“We are not going through this every three months.”
All 28 current EU leaders would have to approve what would be the third
Brexit extension this year.
– Low expectations –
The one EU nation that stands to lose the most from a messy breakup is
Ireland.
Brussels rules require a post-Brexit border to go up along what is now an
all-but invisible frontier with Britain’s Nothern Ireland if no alternative
arrangement is found.
The issue was meant to be resolved by a “backstop” — a complicated fudge
that kept the North partially in and out of the EU while the sides sought a
long-term fix.
But the backstop’s inclusion ended up costing Theresa May her premiership
after it was rejected by parliament three times.
Johnson pronounced it “dead” during his successful leadership campaign.
He travels to Dublin on Monday for his first official meeting with Irish
Prime Minister Leo Varadkar in search a short-term compromise.
It is feared that a hard border could hit the Irish economy and jeapordise
the 1998 Good Friday Agreement that brought the three-decade Northern Ireland
conflict to an end.
Yet Brussels has rejected the alternative proposals aired by Johnson as
either unworkable or unacceptable under EU rules.
Varadkar said he was keeping his expectations low heading into the talks.
“I don’t think the meeting tomorrow is a high stakes meeting in the sense
that I don’t anticipate a big breakthrough tomorrow,” the Irish prime
minister said Sunday.
“If we come to an agreement, that agreement will happen most likely in
October at the EU summit.”