Brexit opponents cry ‘impeachment’ as Boris Johnson follows Trump playbook

On Monday, opposition figures called for the prime minister to be impeached if he pushed ahead with a plan to ignore a new law demanding that he seek to delay Brexit. “No one is above the law,” said Liz Saville Roberts, Westminster leader of Plaid Cymru, the Welsh nationalist party. “Boris Johnson shouldn’t risk finding that out the hard way.”

Impeachment remains on the statute book despite not having been used since 1806, when it was deployed in an effort to oust a Conservative minister accused of misappropriating public funds. Viscount Melville was acquitted but never held office again.

Comparisons between Johnson and Trump have become a mainstay of political coverage on both sides of the Atlantic, with enemies of the British premier accusing him of being Trumplike at every opportunity.

The past week brought a fresh wave of criticism after Johnson delivered a political speech in front of a phalanx of police officers, a typical setting for an American president that provoked immediate criticism that this was not the British way of doing things. Wes Streeting, a Labour MP, tweeted: “Each single one among these officers can be higher positioned policing our communities, not offering a Trump-style picture op.”

“Brothers in chaos” is how local newspapers across the United States headlined a syndicated column discussing Trump and Johnson’s approach. The impeachment demands surfaced hours before Parliament was due to be suspended, or “prorogued,” a move interpreted by opponents as an attempt to hamper MPs’ efforts to block Brexit.

And on Monday, the queen also signed into law a bill demanding Johnson delay Britain’s exit from the European Union if he cannot get a deal with Brussels before the Oct. 31 deadline.

However, Johnson’s reported response risks triggering further crisis and a Supreme Court showdown. According to the Sunday Telegraph, the prime minister is considering writing to the EU requesting an extension, followed by a second letter stating that the government does not actually want an extension.

The Sunday Times of London said the maneuver was an attempt to force opponents to fight the plan in the Supreme Court. Such an approach might make more sense in the U.S., said Luke Coffey, of the Heritage Foundation, where the executive gets to select judges, than in the United Kingdom. “To me, it is very high risk for Boris to rely on the courts to deliver Brexit,” he said. “Whereas for Trump using the Supreme Court might be more predictable.”

Either way, the parallels are clear, according to Jon Tonge, a politics professor at the University of Liverpool, who said that the leaders shared a readiness to flout political norms and conventions. “They are both quite prepared to circumvent Parliament or Congress by whatever means necessary,” he said.

Both justify their actions, he added, in terms of following the people’s will in the face of parliamentary or congressional obstruction.

“I suspect that Johnson’s election campaign — whenever that comes, we expect it in the autumn — would be of a Trumpian nature,” he said, adding that it looks increasingly as if Johnson is using the Trump method as a model.

“That was a Rust Belt campaign, and just look at where Johnson would be campaigning, in northern ‘Leave’ towns [those that support Brexit] that feel left behind, neglected by government.”

For his part, Johnson, always a showman, appears to be embracing his inner Trump and preparing for what might be the closest relationship between two transatlantic leaders since Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. Like Trump, Reagan was vilified by most Britons. But as Johnson, a student of history, might note, Reagan won two elections and served eight years as U.S. president, while Thatcher won three and was prime minister for 11.