The Conservatives saw a majority of 24,000, or 40.6%, in the Devon seat of Tiverton and Honiton evaporate – a record reverse for the party – as the Liberal Democrats triumphed.

In Wakefield, the Red Wall constituency in West Yorkshire snatched by the Conservatives in 2019, it was Labour that took victory.

Politics Hub: Reaction to Boris Johnson’s humiliating double by-election blow

It was the second electoral mauling for the PM this year after the Tories lost nearly 500 council seats at the start of last month.

Mr. Johnson has been under pressure over the partygate scandal as well as the cost of living crisis squeezing British household budgets.

That pressure intensified when a no-confidence vote saw 148 Conservative MPs oppose him.

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said: “Wakefield has shown the country has lost confidence in the Tories.

“This result is a clear judgement on a Conservative Party that has run out of energy and ideas.”

Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey said: “The Liberal Democrats have made political history with this stunning win.

“This should be a wake-up call for all those Conservative MPs propping up Boris Johnson. They cannot afford to ignore this result.

“The public is sick of Boris Johnson’s lies and law-breaking and it’s time for Conservative MPs to finally do the right thing and sack him.”

Mr. Johnson, who is attending the Commonwealth Heads of Government conference in Rwanda, said ahead of the by-elections that he would be “watching the results with interest” while adding that “by-elections in mid-term are never necessarily easy for any government”.

He suggested it would be “crazy” for him to quit if she lost the two seats.

The by-elections, both in leave-voting constituencies, took place on the sixth anniversary of the Brexit referendum.

They were each triggered by the resignations of Conservative MPs: in Tiverton and Honiton, Neil Parish quit after he admitted to watching pornography on his mobile phone in the Commons chamber; in Wakefield, Imran Ahmad Khan stepped down after being found guilty of sexually assaulting a 15-year-old boy.

It became apparent soon after polls closed that it would be a bad night for the Tories.

Luke Hall, the party’s deputy chair, told Sky News it had been a “challenging campaign” and pointed to the impact of divisions laid bare by the confidence vote.

“I certainly would accept that disunity in political parties means parties do not win elections,” he said.

Source: https://news.sky.com/story/double-blow-for-boris-johnson-as-tories-plunge-to-two-by-election-defeats-12639472

The post Double blow for Boris Johnson as Tories plunge to two by-election defeats first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

EU citizens who witnessed the European referendum will not be surprised that Boris Johnson is again turning his fire on us. As a leading figure in Vote Leave, Johnson oversaw a campaign grounded in dog-whistle xenophobia and anti-migrant sentiment. Now in the final week of the election campaign, the Conservatives have reverted straight back to the old playbook.

The European referendum was a low point for many EU nationals in Britain. Dishonest and misleading claims – a Johnson signature in this general election – were already a key feature of Vote Leave back then. Shamelessly they declared that the whole of Turkey would flood the UK should we vote to Remain. This was blatantly obvious Islamophobia.

The British tabloid press aggressively propagated against Europeans, particularly Eastern Europeans. We were simultaneously denounced as benefit scroungers and job stealers, to be held responsible for crumbling public services and an overstretched NHS. To top it off, we were probably all dangerous criminals too. Just existing in this climate of hostility felt deflating.

After Leave won the referendum, the demand to end the free movement of people quickly became the red line for negotiations, locking us out of the single market. It seemed ludicrous that politicians happily advocated for is economically the worst possible Leave option, just to be able to pull up the drawbridge for British and European citizens wanting to live in each other’s countries. Perhaps we should not be surprised that the party that oversaw austerity wreaking havoc across the country for nearly a decade is more concerned with appeasing its hard-right elements than doing what is best for the British people.

The ongoing hostility makes it hard for many of the other Europeans I know in Britain to feel happy and at home, even if they have lived here for most of their adult lives. To add insult to injury, Johnson now proclaims that Europeans have treated the UK too much as though it were “their own country”. This claim is so outrageously offensive because it moves the goalposts of immigration discourse in the UK even further into the gutter. The Tory mask is clearly slipping: whilst they claim to have “sensible” policies on immigration that mean Britain is open to migrants who “contribute”, Johnson is now telling us that the fundamental problem lies in us feeling like we belong.

Framing the argument in this way makes clear that it does not matter to Johnson and the Conservative Party whether someone has come here with a job, is (in their narrow definition) skilled or has a family life to attend to. Being able to “feel at home” in a country means to have rights. It is these rights that a Conservative government will strip away from us.

Despite promises from Priti Patel to the British Asian community that the ending of free movement and the preferential treatment for Europeans will result in leveling up access to the country at the time of the referendum, we are now seeing the opposite. Conditions will not improve for non-European migrants who have long been subject to a form of points and skills-based system. Rather we are heading towards a future that creates a group of second-class citizens, migrant laborers on short term “low-skilled” guest worker visas with no route to permanent settlement, purely here to serve the needs of businesses.

This is a future in which the government will do its utmost to ensure that immigrant communities cannot and will not feel at home here. They have no desire for the UK to be a diverse country. They will not treat those workers – whether they are from the EU or elsewhere – with the dignity and respect they deserve.

The danger of where this will lead is clear. Those who came here as part of the Windrush generation were asked to supply the labor Britain needed, including in the NHS. They are a part of the fabric of this country, but the British state denied their rights. Boris Johnson’s comments make clear that this is how the Conservative Party views all migrant communities.

Sabrina Huck is a Labour List columnist and a German national.

Source: https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/brexit/2019/12/boris-johnson-s-attack-eu-citizens-shows-tories-dont-think-migrants-belong

The post Boris Johnson’s attack on EU citizens shows the Tories don’t think migrants belong here first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Polls show his Conservative Party on course to win a majority, which would mean Parliament voting to leave the European Union by Jan. 31. But in the 2017 election, those polls were wrong, and Johnson will urge supporters not to be complacent.

On Monday, the prime minister is visiting Sunderland in Northeast England, one of the first places to declare in favor of leaving the European Union on the night of the 2016 referendum. He’ll say that vote has been frustrated by members of parliament with “dither and delay, prevarication and procrastination, obfuscation and obstruction,” according to his office.

Johnson himself was part of that parliament and a leader of the Conservative rebellion that stopped Britain from leaving the EU in March. But the signs are that voters aren’t going to punish him for this in Thursday’s election.

Polls in the Sunday newspapers all put the Conservatives in the lead. There were some signs that Jeremy Corbyn’s opposition Labour Party was closing the gap, but not by enough yet to keep the Conservatives out of power.

“No one can rule out a surprise, especially after the surprise of 2017, but on the face of it, Johnson is headed for victory,” said Anthony Wells of polling firm YouGov. “There’s a spread in the polling, but it’s between polls that show Johnson getting a big majority, polls that show a medium majority and polls showing it’s touch-and-go for a majority.”

One possible catalyst for a Tory upset would be if opponents of Brexit manage to persuade people to vote “tactically” for the candidate most likely to defeat the Conservatives. The difficulty is that in tight races, it’s not always clear which party that is.

Labour Campaign

Labour, too, will return to its core message, with Treasury spokesman John McDonnell telling voters that the party will put “money in your pockets” and “power in your hands” by increasing government spending and setting up new bodies that will regenerate the U.K. outside London.

But the party is struggling. McDonnell acknowledged on the BBC on Sunday that the emergence of a strain of anti-Semitism in the party under Corbyn’s leadership was hurting Labour in the election. “I worry that this has had its effect,” he said.

Johnson on Sunday strove to brush off issues about his Brexit deal, denying that products traveling between Northern Ireland and Great Britain would need to undergo inspections. “There won’t be checks,” he told Sky News. “There’s no question of there being checks on goods.”

Johnson Sows Confusion Over Northern Irish Trade After Brexit

The prime minister’s campaign message of the final weekend was that he will curtail immigration. Even so, the details of his “Australian-style points-based immigration system” suggest its workings will change little from the U.K.’s existing points-based system.

Both offer a smooth pathway into the country to the highly skilled and the rich and a route to citizenship for those who have skills that are needed. The new plan expands an existing third route for temporary unskilled workers, which is currently restricted because it’s easy for employers to get unskilled workers from the EU.

For its part, Labour said it would introduce free care for all elderly people. It’s an increasing problem in the U.K. that parties have struggled to solve as the cost of looking after an aging population rises.

Liberal Democrat leader Jo Swinson will try to mitigate the damage done by her pledge to simply revoke Brexit — something critics view as undemocratic — by saying her party has legislation drafted for a second referendum. On Sunday, she said that if there’s another hung parliament, she’d be willing to put Labour in power, but not Corbyn.

To contact the reporters on this story: Robert Hutton in London at rhutton1@bloomberg.net; Greg Ritchie in London at gritchie10@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Tim Ross at tross54@bloomberg.net, Tony Czuczka

Source: https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/johnson-returns-to-key-brexit-message-as-polls-put-him-ahead-1.1359494

The post Johnson Returns to Key Brexit Message as Polls Put Him Ahead first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Despite three years of negotiations, infighting Estonians, the birth of the Brexit Party, the fall of UKIP and attempted party coups, the vast majority of the British public haven’t changed their minds on leaving the EU, that is according to one of the UK’s leading pollsters.

Talking to CGTN Europe, Joe Twyman, the co-founder of Deltapoll, notes that any swing from those who voted to leave the EU towards wanting to remain is chiefly only due to young people entering the electorate and old people passing away, rather than any significant decline of support from either camp.

“Younger people who tend to vote remain, and older people who tend to leave, have, as we euphemistically say … left the electorate.”

Anti-Brexit protests have been increasingly frequent as the deadline approaches. (Credit: ASSOCIATED PRESS)

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Pro-Brexit protesters have often expressed their preference for a no-deal exit from the EU. (Credit: ASSOCIATED PRESS)

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Boris Johnson has proved a divisive prime minister in his short time in office. (Credit: ASSOCIATED PRESS)

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The post ‘Majority of Britons haven’t changed their minds on Brexit,’ says leading pollster first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

BRUSSELS — Wistful Europeans once hoped Britain would reverse itself on Brexit, abandoning its divorce from the European Union in favor of kissing and making up.

As months of departure negotiations dragged into years, devoted Anglophiles in Europe fantasized about a second referendum in which all was reconsidered, then forgiven. They seized on the ups and downs of the Liberal Democrats in Britain, the party that is most unabashedly pro-European. They cheered as Labour Party activists overwhelmingly supported a do-over referendum at their party conference last fall.

European Council President Donald Tusk said in April that he had been warned against dreaming Brexit could be reversed. Still, he resisted, saying, “At least I will not stop dreaming about a better and united Europe.”

But some of those who once wished for a change of heart now just want to finalize the breakup and move on.

E.U. leaders would almost certainly agree to a delay beyond the Oct. 31 Brexit deadline if Prime Minister Boris Johnson asks for one — as a new law passed by the British Parliament requires him to do. The Europeans do not relish the prospect of an abrupt and economically destabilizing no-deal Brexit, preferring an agreement to manage the withdrawal and ease the transition to new trade terms.

At the same time, though, E.U. negotiators are eager to usher Britain out. Policymakers in Brussels and in capitals throughout Europe worry about the consequences of continued uncertainty — and some say Britain is so poisoned on E.U. issues that it might be more destructive inside the bloc than outside of it.

[Scottish court rules Johnson’s suspension of Britain’s Parliament was illegal]

“Immediately after the referendum, among the pro-Europeans in the European institutions, there was the wish that, over the course of time, there would possibly be a reversal,” said Alain Lamassoure, a longtime French member of the European Parliament who retired in June. “But after three years, after all these appalling, ridiculous, dramatic things in the House of Commons, there is a very wide sentiment whereby too much is too much. Now, it’s too late. And it would be better to put an end to this drama.”

Lamassoure said his own reversal occurred in January as he watched British lawmakers vote down the withdrawal deal negotiated between E.U. leaders and then-Prime Minister Theresa May by 432 to 202 — a defeat with little precedent in modern British history.

“It was a shock for all of us, because we overestimated the spirit and the strength of the British parliamentary system,” he said.

A man stands by a souvenir stall during National Day celebrations in the British territory of Gibraltar on Sept. 10. Gibraltar voted 96 percent in favor of Britain’s remaining in the E.U. (Marcos Moreno/AP)

Until Britain formally leaves the E.U., it retains the right to cancel the divorce notification — the Liberal Democrats are campaigning on just such a proposal. Legally, relations would return to the status quo. So some European policymakers like to game out the result they once dreamed about.

But what they see now gives them a headache. Britain remains profoundly split on the question of its relationship with Europe. Opinion polls suggest that if a second referendum were held, it would be unlikely to yield a large majority in favor of leaving or remaining. As in 2016, when Brexit campaigners won narrowly with 52 percent of the vote, any new balloting is likely to produce a knife-edge result.

That means, say those who do not want the British back, that a Britain that decided to stay in the E.U. would have a powerful anti-Europe lobby that would be eager to take down any British leader who played a constructive or conciliatory role in European decision-making.

“It will be a new British prime minister coming to Brussels, explaining to us, ‘It’s a victory for us, it’s a victory for Britain and the E.U., but half of my people are very reluctant to continue to be members, so we need more opt-out provisions,’ ” or ways to avoid E.U. rules, Lamassoure said. The subsequent discussion would be likely to spur other countries to push for their own opt-outs, weakening the E.U. as a whole, he said.

[Frexit? Italeave? After watching Brexit, other European countries say: No, thanks.]

A British reversal “has the potential of very seriously impeding decision-making,” said Fabian Zuleeg, the head of the European Policy Center, a Brussels-based think tank. “It isn’t a very attractive proposition anymore. The U.K. has burned so many bridges.”

Major decisions are looming, including on the mammoth seven-year E.U. budget that will determine the shape of E.U. priorities for years. It needs to be sorted out in the spring, and many policymakers in European capitals fear that Britain could use a continued membership inside the E.U. to hold them hostage and make tough new demands.

European trust in Johnson has quickly vanished. If he were toppled, his likeliest replacement would be Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, a far-left figure who has long been skeptical of the E.U., because he views the bloc as favoring corporations over people. Many European diplomats doubt he would be significantly easier to work with than the Conservative Party leader.

[Boris Johnson’s statements about the state of Brexit negotiations bear little relationship to reality, E.U. officials say]

Nor is there any guarantee that a future leader could not try, yet again, to pursue a departure from the E.U., creating more uncertainty and chaos.

“What sort of trust can you have in the U.K.?” said a senior European diplomat who is directly involved in Brexit negotiations, speaking on the condition of anonymity so as not to undercut what talks remain.

In the meantime, with E.U. companies struggling to plan for a jolting shift to their business model that could happen next month, or in three months, or not at all, their planning costs are mounting, further infuriating the Europeans.

European policymakers are coming to accept that it may be best to deal with the pain of Brexit and move on.

“The certainty of a deterioration can be better than continuous uncertainty without a new perspective,” Dutch Trade Minister Sigrid Kaag told Het Financieele Dagblad, a daily newspaper, on Monday.

That was the position of French President Emmanuel Macron at an emergency Brexit summit in April. Macron was an outlier then, pushing for a shorter Brexit extension than other leaders wanted to allow and arguing that British lawmakers should be forced to pick between the existing withdrawal deal and a chaotic, no-deal Brexit. Now there is broader support for Macron’s point of view.

French President Emmanuel Macron, left, hosts British Prime Minister Boris Johnson at the G-7 summit in Biarritz on Aug. 24. (Neil Hall/Pool/Reuters)

Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/europeans-once-hoped-the-british-would-reverse-brexit-now-many-cant-wait-for-them-to-leave/2019/09/11/729477ba-d33a-11e9-8924-1db7dac797fb_story.html?noredirect=on

The post Europeans once hoped the British would reverse Brexit. Now, many can’t wait for them to leave first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Britain’s two main political parties are haggling over the nation’s withdrawal from the European Union, known as Brexit. The badly divided government is in crisis, unable to agree on an approach to the country’s biggest peacetime decision in decades. The deadline to come up with a plan is fast approaching.

The struggle has already cost one prime minister, Theresa May, her job; she announced on May 24 that she would resign after failing to come up with a plan that satisfied her party, her coalition partners and officials in Brussels, the seat of the European Union.

Now it is taking a toll on her successor, Boris Johnson. The Conservative Party chose Mr. Johnson, a brash proponent of withdrawal, to succeed Mrs. May and take control of the Brexit process.

It has not gone well.

Many lawmakers were outraged over Mr. Johnson’s insistence that if need be, he would pull Britain from the European Union even without a formal agreement — a move many warn could mean major economic damage. And his attempts to in effect shut Parliament out of the process did not win him many friends.

When lawmakers rose up, seizing control of the legislative process, and Mr. Johnson lost his majority in Parliament, he responded by tossing out rebels from his Conservative Party and demanding a new general election.

The deadline for withdrawal is currently Oct. 31. Mr. Johnson insists he can cut a deal with the European Union before then. But time is rapidly running out.

What ultimately emerges could determine the shape of Britain and its place in the world for decades. Following is a basic guide to Brexit, what it is, how it developed into the mess it is today and how it could ultimately be resolved.

What is Brexit?

A portmanteau of the words “Britain” and “exit,” Brexit is shorthand for Britain’s split from the European Union, changing its relationship to the bloc on trade, security, and migration.

Britain has been debating the pros and cons of membership in a European community of nations almost from the moment the idea was broached. It held its first referendum on membership in what was then called the European Economic Community in 1975, less than three years after it joined when 67 percent of voters supported staying in the bloc.

In 2013, Prime Minister David Cameron promised a national referendum on European Union membership with the idea of settling the question once and for all. The options it offered were broad and vague — Remain or Leave — and Mr. Cameron was convinced that Remain would win handily.

Britons voted on June 23, 2016, as a refugee crisis made migration a subject of political rage across Europe and amid accusations that the Leave campaign had relied on lies and broken election laws. An ill-defined Brexit won 52 percent of the vote.

Not only did that not settle the debate, but it also saved for another day the tangled question of what should come next. After nearly three years of debate and negotiation, that remains unanswered.

How did the vote break down?

Most voters in England and Wales supported Brexit, particularly in rural areas and smaller cities. That overcame majority support to remain in the European Union in London, Scotland and Northern Ireland. See a detailed map of the vote.

Young people overwhelmingly voted against leaving, while older voters supported it.

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Why is it such a big deal?

Europe is Britain’s most important export market and its biggest source of foreign investment, and membership in the bloc has helped London cement its position as a global financial center. An announcement, or at least a threat, from a major business to leave Britain because of Brexit is a regular occurrence. The list of companies that are thinking about relocating includes Airbus, which employs 14,000 people and supports more than 100,000 other jobs.

The government has projected that in 15 years, the country’s economy will be 4 percent to 9 percent smaller under Brexit than it would inside the bloc, depending on how it leaves.

Mrs. May had promised that Brexit would end free movement, the right of people from elsewhere in Europe to live and work in Britain, and vice versa. That was a triumph for some working-class people who see immigration as a threat to their jobs, but dispiriting for young Britons hoping to study or work abroad.

Mr. Johnson wants to strike an agreement of his own with Brussels by Oct. 31 — specifically one without the controversial Irish border provisions in Mrs. May’s deal — but that may not be possible.

What’s holding it up?

Undoing 46 years of economic integration in one stroke was never going to be easy, and the Brexit process has been bedeviled by the same divisions that led to the referendum in the first place. Both Britain’s main parties, the governing Conservatives and the Labour opposition, are divided over what to do, leaving Parliament so factionalized that there may be no coherent plan that would get a majority.

Mrs. May spent 18 months negotiating a divorce deal with the European Union, shedding one cabinet minister after another in the process. Her plan would have kept customs and trade arrangements at least temporarily, but ultimately envisioned cutting most of those ties. It did not detail what would replace them in Britain’s future relationship with the European Union.

When she presented her plan to Parliament in January, it was rejected by a historic margin of 230 votes. When she tried again in March, she fared less badly, but the pact was still soundly defeated, 391 to 242.

Some ardent Brexiteers, who would accept a no-deal withdrawal, came around to supporting Mrs. May’s deal — not because they liked it, but because they believed it might be their only chance to avoid a soft Brexit or remaining in the bloc. But a third attempt to pass her bill, also in March, failed 344 to 286.

That prompted Mrs. May to do something she had hoped to avoid: negotiate with Labour, which advocates a soft Brexit. Those talks failed to accomplish anything that would allow her to proceed, and she was eventually forced to abandon plans for a fourth vote. The revised plan was scorned by both Conservative and Labour lawmakers, and the decision not to publish the plan, let alone hold a vote, was a clear sign that Mrs. May’s days were numbered.

We keep hearing about the Irish border. What’s that about?

The single greatest hangup is the question of Britain’s only land border with the European Union — the invisible line between Ireland, another member state of the bloc, and Northern Ireland, which is part of the United Kingdom.

Mrs. May and her Irish counterpart, Leo Varadkar, want to prevent checkpoints from going up at the border; such barriers are generally seen as incompatible with the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, which brought respite from decades of violence in Northern Ireland.

But the method she agreed for guaranteeing that — called “the backstop” — has alienated much of Parliament.

The backstop would keep the United Kingdom in a trading relationship with Europe until a final deal to avoid a hard border could be agreed on, something that hard-line Brexiteers fear would never happen.

And it would bind Northern Ireland to even more European rules, to the dismay of those who reject any regulatory differences between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom. Most notably, that includes the Democratic Unionist Party of Northern Ireland, whose 10 lawmakers give Mrs. May her parliamentary majority.

Mr. Johnson has promised to negotiate a new deal without the backstop arrangement, which he says would leave Britain in an “absolutely unacceptable” situation.

Read more: What Is the Irish Backstop, and Why Is It Holding Up Brexit?

How did we end up with an Oct. 31 deadline?

Just about the only clear decision Parliament has made on Brexit since the 2016 referendum was to give formal notice in 2017 to quit, under Article 50 of the European Union’s Lisbon Treaty, a legal process setting it on a two-year path to departure. That set March 29, 2019, as the formal divorce date.

When it became clear that Parliament would not accept Mrs. May’s deal by then, the European Union pushed the precipice back to April 12, to allow her to try again. The timing was dictated by the coming European Parliament elections, the thinking being that if Britain were to take part in that vote, it would need to begin preparing at least six weeks in advance.

Once again, the “cliff-edge” of a no-deal Brexit loomed, but the new deadline did not yield any more agreement in London, forcing Mrs. May to plead, again, for more time. European leaders insisted on a longer delay this time and set Oct. 31 as the date.

But in announcing her decision to step aside, Mrs. May acknowledged that lawmakers had yet to find a way to pass that deal or to agree on what they want instead.

The fantasy that Brexit would be easy has crumbled, and lawmakers who made lofty promises to their constituents are having to face hard reality.

Somehow, having the nightmare come to a head — again — on Halloween seems fitting.

What happens next?

On Aug. 28, Mr. Johnson announced that he would cut short the time lawmakers have to debate his Brexit plans before the Oct. 31st withdrawal deadline.

The move drew swift and fierce backlash from the opposition — and some lawmakers within Mr. Johnson’s own Conservative Party — and caused the British pound to plunge.

In the first week of September, Parliament blocked his plans to leave the union with or without an agreement. It then stymied his bid, at least for now, to call an election for Oct. 15, out of fear he could secure a new majority in favor of breaking with Europe, deal or no deal. But the government has said it would hold another parliamentary vote on Sept. 9th on an early election.

What are the alternatives?

Mr. Johnson has said he would be prepared to lead a no-deal withdrawal, but that he will work toward a better deal. A less strident leader might have tacked to the center by committing to a customs union with Europe — a close trading relationship that would prevent the imposition of tariffs and quotas. That would solve the Irish border dilemma and possibly win votes from Labour lawmakers.

Mr. Corbyn has worked hard not to commit Labour to a distinct course on Brexit. But under pressure from many of his members, he has moved toward supporting a second referendum on the eventual withdrawal agreement.

But a referendum could take many forms, and even among its backers, there is no agreement on that, either. Nor is it certain that a rerun of the vote would deliver a different result.

Still, other pro-Europe voters want Parliament to kill Brexit on its own, or at least delay it for years, by revoking Article 50.

With the suspension of Parliament and a shorter time to come up with a plan, exiting without a deal remains a real possibility, one that that hard-line pro-Brexit forces in the Conservative Party, including Mr. Johnson, insist would be preferable to a long delay.

Visit our more detailed guide to what could happen next.

The post What Is Brexit? What Does ‘No-Deal’ Mean? first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

LONDON — He jabbed his finger in the air and shook his head theatrically. He dared the opposition to back his call for an election and sneered that the Labour Party’s leader was a “chlorinated chicken.”

By the time Prime Minister Boris Johnson finished taking questions in Parliament on Wednesday, he had ushered in a new season of political mayhem in Britain, one in which the voters are now as likely as their feuding leaders to resolve the questions over how and when Britain should leave the European Union.

The raucous spectacle in the House of Commons illustrated the obstacles Mr. Johnson will face as he tries to lead Britain out of the European Union next month. On Wednesday, Parliament handed the prime minister two stinging defeats.

It first blocked his plans to leave the union with or without an agreement. And it then stymied his bid, at least for the moment, to call an election for Oct. 15, out of fear he could secure a new majority in favor of breaking with Europe, deal or no deal.

The frenzied maneuvering showed how Brexit keeps propelling the country ever deeper into uncharted political territory, where centuries of unwritten rules and conventions are giving way to a brawl over the future of one of the world’s oldest democracies.

The upheaval in Parliament on Wednesday was the latest and perhaps the ultimate test of a political system that has been under unrelenting strain since the British voted narrowly to leave the European Union in June 2016.

Britain has since unwittingly become a laboratory for how a deeply rooted parliamentary democracy can be shaken to its core by populism, especially when wrapped in the democratic legitimacy of a public referendum.

Parliament has become a theater, beamed live around the world, in which democracy’s messy, self-interested and self-destructive tendencies are laid bare in real-time.

Despite the vote by lawmakers defying the prime minister’s call to go to the polls, Britain still appears headed for a general election in the coming weeks or months, with the opposition likely to agree to a vote once a law forbidding a no-deal Brexit is firmly in place.

An election could clarify a debate that has become hopelessly muddled. A clear victory would give Mr. Johnson’s Conservative government a mandate to withdraw, regardless of whether it strikes an agreement with officials in Brussels. A defeat would eject him from office and in all likelihood delay and reshape the terms of Britain’s exit.

Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of the opposition, in the House of Commons on Wednesday. Mr. Corbyn complained that Mr. Johnson refused to answer questions about the economic costs of a no-deal Brexit.CreditJessica Taylor/UK Parliament

Yet an inconclusive result — equally plausible, given the splintered nature of British politics — could leave the nation even more paralyzed than it is now. With one of the last political mechanisms exhausted, an indecisive vote could deepen divisions and reinforce fears that Brexit is a problem that defies a democratic solution.

In many ways, Britain appears set on a course, not unlike that in the United States, where President Trump, an ally of Mr. Johnson’s, has galvanized his political base by vilifying his opponents. Like Mr. Trump, Brexit has not just dominated the nation’s political debate but changed the very nature of its politics.

“You have a complete fracturing of the British political system and a British government that has ground to a halt,” said Frank Luntz, a Republican pollster who advised the Conservative Party in past elections and knew Mr. Johnson as a student at Oxford.

“Everyone is seeking to be as dogmatic and punitive as they can,” he said. “This is doomsday politics at its worst.”

If Mr. Johnson can ultimately get Parliament to agree to an election, he hopes to mobilize those who voted to leave by tarring his opponents as lackeys of Europe. He is ruthlessly purging the ranks of the Conservative Party to make it more radically pro-Brexit and fend off threats from a new Brexit Party.

Mr. Johnson got an endorsement from Mr. Trump. “He’s in there fighting,” the president said. “Boris knows how to win.”

The parallels between Mr. Johnson’s campaign and Mr. Trump’s takeover of the Republican Party are obvious, but there are important differences as well. Lawmakers in Britain have pushed back vigorously on Mr. Johnson’s tactics, with even members of the prime minister’s party rebelling against his drive for a swift exit.

The proposed timing of a vote, before the Oct. 31 deadline to leave the European Union, has stoked suspicions that Mr. Johnson is acting in his own interests rather than the nation’s. Rather than embracing the call for an election, the Labour Party insisted that Parliament first prohibit Mr. Johnson from pursuing a no-deal Brexit before it would agree.

On Wednesday, Parliament moved closer to achieving that. By a vote of 327 to 299, lawmakers advanced a bill that would tie Mr. Johnson’s hands-on Brexit, barring any departure without a deal. The bill now goes to the House of Lords, which must give its assent.

Until it’s the law of the land, Parliament is determined to resist Mr. Johnson’s push for a new election. And late Wednesday night, Mr. Johnson failed to win in another vote the two-thirds majority he needed to call an election.

The expelled Conservative lawmaker Kenneth Clarke, left, and Theresa May, the former British prime minister, in the House of Commons on Wednesday.CreditJessica Taylor/UK Parliament

“Under normal circumstances, no opposition party would ever get in the way of a governing party calling it quits,” said Baroness Rosalind Scott, a member of the House of Lords and a former president of the Liberal Democrats. “But all the normal rules are gone, which makes it difficult to predict the outcome.”

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Britain’s new Prime Minister Boris Johnson makes a statement in the House of Commons in London on Thursday. (Photo: AFP)

On Tuesday last week, Boris Johnson won the second round of the Conservative Party leadership election against Jeremy Hunt. He won convincingly, with 66 percent of the vote of the membership. In the early afternoon of Wednesday, Theresa May tendered her resignation as prime minister to the Queen. Later that afternoon the Queen invited Boris Johnson, as leader of the largest party in the House of Commons, to become the 14th to hold that office in her reign. Constitutional decorum having been observed, savagery then followed.

Boris Johnson undertook a reshuffle of his Cabinet, more vicious and spiteful than any seen before. More Cabinet ministers were sacked than had ever been sacked in any previous reshuffle — by far. The main criterion for dismissal appears to have been support for Jeremy Hunt. The main criterion for elevation appears to have been loyalty to Boris Johnson.

The whole process has more resembled a display of pique by a spoilt brat than the assembly of a competent government. To give some examples — the home secretary is now Priti Patel. She had been dismissed from her previous Cabinet position — secretary of state for international development — for pursuing her own foreign policy, in private and unauthorized meetings with Israeli officials while ostensibly on holiday. Dominic Raab is now foreign secretary. Previously, as Cabinet minister for Brexit, it had been revealed that he didn’t appreciate that most of the UK’s trade with the European Union — by far the UK’s largest trading partner — goes through the port of Dover. To top it all, Dominic Cummings, the previous chief strategist for the Leave campaign during the referendum, has been appointed to be Boris Johnson’s chief adviser. The fact he had also been found to be in contempt of Parliament for refusing to answer questions on the use of fake news by the Leave campaign was clearly irrelevant.

The net result of the process has been a takeover of the government by fundamentalist Brexiters, who believe as articles of faith the slogans deployed by Boris Johnson during the leadership election — Brexit on October 31 — “deal or no deal”, “do or die”. Whether Boris Johnson actually believes them, though, is uncertain.

Posing as a hard Brexiter certainly won Boris Johnson the Conservative leadership election. Painting the Conservative Party as a hard Brexit party also makes tactical sense — at least in the short term. The Conservative Party faces an existential threat from the Brexit Party. It was founded only a few months ago by the highly effective and populist Nigel Farage as the party of a “hard” Brexit. By a hard Brexit it means a Brexit with minimal links to the EU, and above all one shorn of the hated “backstop”. The “backstop” is a device which was inserted into the deal with the EU negotiated by Ms. May. In the event that the EU and the UK fail to reach a new free trade deal, the UK will remain in the EU customs union. This is necessary to preserve the soft border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, a foundational pillar of the Northern Irish peace process. This uncompromising stance has been frighteningly attractive to large swathes of Conservative voters.

By repositioning the Conservative Party as a party of hard Brexit, Boris Johnson can hope to blunt the Brexit Party’s appeal. If he delivers a hard Brexit, the Brexit Party’s raison d’être disappears. He is unlikely to do so since the EU has already explicitly refused to remove the backstop from the deal. The next step would then be to present a hard Brexit to Parliament. If Parliament refuses to endorse it, Boris Johnson can challenge Parliament to vote him out of office and trigger a general election. In the election, Boris Johnson can campaign for a hard Brexit, crowd out the Brexit Party and win a majority. In the short term, then, that tactic leads to victory. In the longer term, though, it is playing with fire.

A few weeks ago, I put this scenario to a senior Conservative MP and brave supporter of the cause of remaining in the EU. He didn’t think a general election would necessarily follow a defeat for Boris Johnson. Labour votes would be necessary to call one, but the Labour Party is in no state to fight a general election. Its leader, Jeremy Corbyn, is deeply unpopular with the public and its Brexit policy is a masterpiece of casuistry and obfuscation. It, too, is leaching votes — to the explicitly pro-EU Liberal Democrats and Green Party. It probably does not want an early general election. So while Parliament might vote down a hard Brexit, it might not vote for a general election. Instead, it could put in office a government of national unity, supported by a coalition of moderate Conservatives, Liberal Democrats and the bulk of the Labour Party. That government could then negotiate a soft Brexit or even call a referendum.

Even if the moves to install a national unity government were to fail and a general election was to ensue, the result is not a given. Recent opinion polls suggest that Boris Johnson has had some success in attracting away Conservative voters from the Brexit Party, but the dynamics of a campaign could change that. The delays and arguments in Parliament have allowed Mr. Farage to propagate a false, but persuasive, narrative of a self-serving elite thwarting the people’s will. Further delays and arguments will only make it easier for Mr. Farage to peddle that myth.

If a general election produces another hung Parliament, it will be no more willing to pass a hard Brexit than the present one. Boris Johnson will then have failed. If on the other hand, Boris Johnson wins a majority, he will face a monumental decision. A hard Brexit will certainly wreak massive economic devastation and will probably lead to the breakup of the United Kingdom. The Scots and Northern Irish had both voted convincingly to remain in the EU and would be likely to secede. The Welsh could follow soon after. At that point then Boris Johnson will be put to the test: If he sticks to his word, he destroys the country. If he goes back on it, he destroys himself.

Source: https://www.asianage.com/opinion/oped/010819/deal-or-no-deal-brexit-boris-playing-with-fire.html

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LONDON — Boris Johnson became Britain’s new prime minister Wednesday, vowing to lead the U.K. out of the European Union, “no ifs, ands or buts.”

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