In preventing a parliamentary vote on Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Brexit withdrawal agreement, House of Commons Speaker John Bercow has turned this Parliament into a joke. Only an election can resolve the dysfunction.
The problem is quite simple. The British government is seeking Parliament’s assent to a deal to leave the European Union at the end of this month. But while Johnson’s deal could scrape by with a majority in the Commons, a parliamentary majority opposes a “no deal” Brexit and has already voted to make Johnson request an extension from the EU rather than let such a thing happen.
The basic takeaway here is that Parliament remains stuck in a black hole of Brexit chaos.
An election is the most obvious way to escape the black hole. While Johnson intends to push ahead and seek a parliamentary vote on his bill before Halloween, that effort is likely to face the same impotence we saw on Saturday — namely, the bill’s inability to win a majority vote due to amendments tacked onto it.
That takes us back to the need for an election. But even here, there’s chaos. The opinion polls show Johnson’s Conservative Party with a sustaining 5%-15% lead over the left-wing Labour Party opposition. With Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party also showing 10%-15% support, Johnson believes he would win an election and form a new majority in the House of Commons — if necessary, with coalition support from the Brexit Party.
Conversely, if the current polls are accurate, the only way Labour could unseat the Conservatives and form the next government would be if it sought a coalition deal with the Liberal Democrats and the Scottish Nationalist Party. While these parties are in broad agreement over calling another referendum to revoke the 2016 referendum result, the Liberal Democrats are deeply skeptical of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.
Regardless, this present parliamentary dysfunction cannot be allowed to continue.
Whatever side Britons fall on the issue of Brexit and broader policy, the current House of Commons and current speaker have shown they are incapable of reaching a majority verdict on anything that would bring Brexit to a conclusion. That failure mocks the very essence of Britain’s parliamentary democracy. An election must resolve the deadlock.
