Johnson's strategy comes unstuck6 Sep 2019 21:45
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The past few days have been about one objective alone — forcing a general election, which Boris Johnson hopes to win, in advance of the final pre-Brexit meeting of European Union leaders on October 17. Everything else has been tactics and noise.
In order to achieve this, the first thing that Mr Johnson needed to do was force opponents of a no-deal Brexit to show their hand early. That's why the government announced that it intended to prorogue parliament — not to shut down attempts to rule out a no-deal Brexit by changing the law but to make sure that they were done and dusted at the earliest opportunity.
The second tactic was the purge of Tory anti-no-deal rebels. Mr Johnson, and more importantly his chief strategist, Dominic Cummings, knew that about two dozen Tory MPs were implacably opposed to a no-deal Brexit and would do everything they could to stop it.
So they set up the confrontation early and made it clear that rebels would be banned from standing as Conservative candidates at the next election.
The rebels duly rebelled, as Downing Street expected, and were duly kicked out. That gave Mr Johnson the best chance of getting a new parliamentary party free from no-deal phobics at an election Downing Street has been planning all along.
The extension bill passing also gave Mr Johnson the excuse to hold the election — without getting the blame.
I didn't want it, Mr Johnson could claim, but this has been forced on me by Remainer MPs. He could then frame the election as a choice between a strong prime minister determined to see through Brexit and a split Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn who want to prolong the agony still further.
Until last night, despite the noise, that strategy had largely been successful. But Labour MPs, if not Mr Corbyn himself, have seen the elephant trap being laid for them and appear determined to avoid it. And that puts Downing Street in a dilemma they were not anticipating. If Labour refuse again on Monday to vote for an early election, as looks likely, but instead insist on a later date, Mr Johnson will be obliged to ask for a Brexit extension. Then his entire strategy needs to be rethought.
He would face going into that election with his "do or die" pledge of an October 31 deadline in tatters, with the Brexit Party snapping at his heels. Worse, Labour might stop him calling an election at all on a pretext.
As Bruno Waterfield reports below, there is now almost no chance that he will be able to strike a deal with Brussels next month. That means, with the extension bill in law, that he would be ordered by the courts to go to Brussels and request a Brexit delay.
He could try to resign and hand the job of asking for an extension to Jeremy Corbyn or a rebel alliance. But, as 2010 showed us, there must be a prime minister at all times, so handing the job to someone else is not as easy as it looks.
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