Now that the United Kingdom’s parliament has been suspended, Prime Minister Boris Johnson has five weeks to come up with a sound plan that can be presented to MPs once they return back to work.
Remember, last week Parliament successfully passed legislation that could significantly tie the PM’s hands. First of all, Johnson’s original plan to simply not strike a deal and have a hard Brexit by default on October 31 is more or less off the table. He can technically still do it, but he will have to hold a vote in Parliament for it, and so far he has lost every single one out of six votes, so it’s not very likely that MPs will support him.
His second option, however, is to strike a deal with the European Union. Then he will have to ask Parliament to hold a meaningful vote on that deal, just as Theresa May did on hers. Technically speaking, if he manages to negotiate a deal in the next five weeks, it is possible that we see a soft Halloween Brexit happen anyway.
So what could this deal say to make it better than Theresa May’s? The main issue at hand remains the Irish backstop. Boris Johnson stated that according to May’s deal, all of the UK could be left subject to EU laws without the power to amend them, making the kingdom a “vassal state” to the EU. Now Johnson is looking for a Northern Ireland-only backstop, something that the EU suggested originally.
Nevertheless, treating Northern Ireland as separate and different from the rest of the United Kingdom, and pushing it towards a closer affiliation with the Republic of Ireland than with the UK itself can be detrimental to the unity of the kingdom. The notion that Northern Ireland might start fighting for its independence is so terrifying to conservative UK politicians that May rejected it altogether and suggested an all-UK-wide backstop, just for the sake of the United Kingdom’s unity.
So, even if the EU agrees to such a deal with Prime Minister Johnson (which is a big question in itself), then it’s not clear whether Johnson will be able to get that deal past parliament. The unionists and Labour are definitely not going to support it.
