The UK's prime minister is probably right to think that suspending Parliament has made a last-minute Brexit deal more likely. Fortunately, there is also a decent chance that his quasi-dictatorial behavior will provoke a rapid parliamentary backlash that ends his political career.
LONDON – The long-running tragicomedy of the United Kingdom’s relationship with the European Union is, at long last, approaching its climax. Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s maneuver to suspend the UK Parliament for almost the entire period leading up to the Brexit deadline of October 31 was described by Speaker of the House John Bercow as a “constitutional outrage,” but it had one advantage. It confronted the 650 Members of Parliament with a clear binary choice. Either a majority of MPs will vote in the first week of September to replace Johnson with a new caretaker prime minister, or they will leave him with unconstrained power to implement his threat of a no-deal Brexit, putting Britain on a collision course with the EU. That choice, in turn, will have big implications for the EU’s future.
LONDON – The long-running tragicomedy of the United Kingdom’s relationship with the European Union is, at long last, approaching its climax. Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s maneuver to suspend the UK Parliament for almost the entire period leading up to the Brexit deadline of October 31 was described by Speaker of the House John Bercow as a “constitutional outrage,” but it had one advantage. It confronted the 650 Members of Parliament with a clear binary choice. Either a majority of MPs will vote in the first week of September to replace Johnson with a new caretaker prime minister, or they will leave him with unconstrained power to implement his threat of a no-deal Brexit, putting Britain on a collision course with the EU. That choice, in turn, will have big implications for the EU’s future.