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Boris Johnson Now Appears Close to Securing a U.K. Election in December Britain to Hold Election in December, Opening New Phase in Brexit Odyssey
(32 minutes later)
LONDON — Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain was within striking distance Tuesday of securing a general election in December designed to break the deadlock over Brexit by effectively putting the question back to the people. LONDON — Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain, in the boldest gamble of his high-wire political career, won backing on Tuesday to hold a general election on Dec. 12, throwing back to the British people the bedeviling issue of how, or even if, their country should leave the European Union.
After a change of heart by the main opposition Labour Party, the House of Commons approved in principle a December election, bringing the prime minister close to an objective he had been denied three times by Parliament. The 438-20 vote in Parliament, which came after the opposition Labour Party dropped its resistance, provided the starting gun for one of the most momentous and unpredictable campaigns in post-World War II Britain, a six-week race that could forever alter Britain’s relationship to Europe and its place in the world.
An opposition push to shift the date of voting, from Dec. 12 to Dec. 9, failed. And, earlier, there was more good news for Mr. Johnson when two amendments to expand the number of people eligible to cast ballots in the election were not put to a vote on Tuesday. In theory they could return at a later stage, if members of the House of Lords decide to consider them, though that is thought unlikely. Much will hinge on the sentiments of a fickle British public that is not just divided into warring camps but exhausted with the whole shambolic process and hoping for something, anything, finally to be decided — as long as it is not for the other side.
Mr. Johnson had threatened to pull his Brexit plan had those amendments gone through. The motion to hold the election must still go to the House of Lords, where it could conceivably be held up, but that was unlikely.
Assuming Mr. Johnson wins the final vote on Tuesday as expected, a new election could end the gridlock that has left Britain’s politics paralyzed in the aftermath of the 2016 referendum to leave the European Union. For Mr. Johnson, a flamboyant populist who took office in July and has presided over a period of unrelenting political upheaval but little tangible progress, the election is a bet that he and his Conservative Party can win a parliamentary majority by selling to the public a Brexit plan that Parliament has already rejected.
Seemingly with an eye to the looming election, Mr. Johnson invited back into the party 10 of the 21 lawmakers he expelled after they voted for a law to stop Britain from leaving the European Union without an agreement. Among them was Nicholas Soames, a grandson of Winston Churchill, but not Rory Stewart or Philip Hammond, both former cabinet ministers. But it comes with extraordinary risks, not least that Britain could end up in the same political cul-de-sac it is in today, with no party winning a clear majority and with Parliament still hopelessly divided about the way forward, more than three years after Britons voted to leave the European Union.
On Monday the Labour Party opposed an early election, depriving Mr. Johnson of the votes he needed and thwarting his third attempt to secure one. But on Tuesday, Mr. Corbyn, the party’s leader, signaled a significant shift when he addressed his top team. It is also plausible that the divided opposition camp could put aside its differences and ride a wave of public disgust with the Conservative government’s failures to an upset victory that puts the Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, in the prime minister’s office and leads to a softening or outright reversal of Brexit.
Mr. Corbyn explained his change by saying that his primary condition for supporting an election had been fulfilled on Monday when the European Union granted Britain its latest Brexit extension, until Jan. 31, and Mr. Johnson then formalized it, removing the possibility that Britain would leave the European Union without a deal before an election could take place. “The gulf between left and right is so deep, and the outcome is so uncertain,” said Anand Menon, a professor of politics at Kings College London. “It is a uniquely volatile moment in our electoral history.”
“I have consistently said that we are ready for an election and our support is subject to a no-deal Brexit being taken off the table,” Mr. Corbyn said in comments released by his office, adding that this condition “has now been met.” Still, after weeks of paralysis, capped by another day of byzantine maneuvering in Parliament over the date of the vote, the prospect of going to the polls provided a rare moment of clarity. As Mr. Menon put it, “You can say many things about this election, but you can’t say it is not an election about big things.”
“We will now launch the most ambitious and radical campaign for real change our country has ever seen,” Mr. Corbyn said. Facing a British public that is fed up with Brexit and campaigning in the early twilight of the days before Christmas, Mr. Johnson and his opponents will seek to frame the election around competing visions of Britain’s future: Mr. Johnson’s, based on a swift exit from the European Union; and the Labour Party’s, based on holding a second referendum on whether to leave at all.
Labour has been divided over whether to hold an early election that opinion polls currently suggest the party would lose. History warns, however, that other issues could intrude, from crime or the stability of Britain’s National Health Service to an external shock, like a terrorist attack, or a peripheral issue that assumes symbolic importance.
But Labour had been outflanked because two smaller opposition parties, the Liberal Democrats and the Scottish National Party, seemed ready to support Mr. Johnson’s bid for an early vote. Mr. Johnson’s predecessor, Theresa May, called a snap election in 2017, confident that she could expand her majority and strengthen her hand in negotiating a Brexit deal.
The smaller opposition parties object to the proposed election date of Dec. 12., preferring an earlier vote. But Mr. Johnson saw off a push by Labour’s to provide votes for European Union citizens living in Britain or for 16- and 17-year-olds (who can vote in Scottish elections) — something that the government opposes. Instead, Mrs. May wound up with a shrunken majority after running a desultory campaign during which she was tarred for advocating a harsh new policy on care for the elderly that critics branded a “dementia tax.”
Downing Street had made it clear on Tuesday that it would resist any attempt to push either cause, arguing that it would be practically impossible to give 16- and 17-year-olds the right to vote in time for the election. With two smaller parties, the Liberal Democrats and the hard-line Brexit Party, also contesting for votes, the choice of the next government could turn on a tiny number of Parliamentary seats. Far from securing a healthy majority, the next prime minister may have to govern with a minority, as Mr. Johnson has.
Behind this dispute lie clear political interests, because younger people and residents from other European Union countries are thought to be less in favor of Brexit, meaning their inclusion could help opposition parties. Britain last held a cold-weather election in February 1974, when an embattled Conservative prime minister, Edward Heath, went to the voters during a time of economic upheaval and labor unrest with a stark manifesto, “Who governs Britain?”
Downing Street seemed more flexible on the election date. It argued that the day preferred by the Liberal Democrats, Dec. 9, was impractical because it is a Monday and would force local election officials to make preparations during a weekend. Mr. Johnson seemed more open to accepting Dec. 10 or 11 if opposition parties insisted, though that would mean abandoning the recent British tradition of holding elections on Thursdays. The result was a hung Parliament, and Heath had to give way to a Labour government.
Not all Labour lawmakers agreed with Mr. Corbyn’s decision to support an election at a time when his party is well behind the Conservatives in the opinion polls. Barry Sheerman, a Labour member of Parliament, described the plan as “sheer madness” and said on Twitter that a majority of the leadership team was against it. What Mr. Johnson has going for him, many analysts agree, is a substantial lead over the Labour Party in the polls — more than 10 percentage points in some — and a clear message: he will take Britain out of the European Union.
“It’s great fodder for an election,” said Mujtaba Rahman, an expert on Brexit at the Eurasia Group, a political risk consultancy. “He can run a very compelling centrist campaign, albeit with a hard Brexit program.”
Nevertheless, on Tuesday, Mr. Johnson needed only a simple majority of lawmakers to support his plan. The other two opposition parties would have given him enough votes without Labour. With his shambling charm and studiously unkempt style, Mr. Johnson is a singular presence on the campaign trail — a politician whose celebrity has put him on a first-name basis with virtually the entire country.
The Liberal Democrats believe that it is in their interests to have a quick election before Brexit because their main policy is to oppose British withdrawal from the European Union. They argue that there is insufficient support in Parliament for a second referendum and that a change of government is the only chance of stopping Brexit. “Boris is one of the very few people in British politics who can enter an ordinary shopping center on a dull Wednesday afternoon and utterly transform the atmosphere,” said Andrew Gimson, who wrote a biography of Mr. Johnson. “People just want to have selfies taken with him.”
The Scottish National Party also opposes Brexit, but would like an election soon because its former leader, Alex Salmond, faces trial next year on charges of attempted rape and sexual assault — a case that is likely to generate negative publicity for the party. Mr. Johnson, 55, has not lost an election since 1997, when he stood for Parliament in Wales and was trounced by the Labour candidate. He was first elected to Parliament in 2001, in a safe Conservative district, and won two terms as mayor of London, where his antics — like getting stuck on a zip line during the Olympic Games, waving two Union Jacks — earned him further notice.
But only on Monday, when Labour was still opposed, Mr. Johnson failed in his third attempt to secure a general election because, under the mechanism he chose then, he required a two-thirds majority. The flip side of Mr. Johnson’s devil-may-care manner, Mr. Gimson said, is that “he is tasteless and excessive and goes too far.” Those less flattering traits t have been on display during the frequently toxic debate over Brexit in the House of Commons since Mr. Johnson took office.
On Tuesday Mr. Corbyn, who performed better than analysts predicted in the 2017 election, said that he was looking forward to a campaign. He came under fierce criticism for dismissing threats of violence made against members of Parliament as “humbug.” And he was condemned, including by his own sister, Rachel, for saying that Britain should get Brexit done in the memory of Jo Cox, a member of Parliament who was ardently pro-European and was killed a week before the 2016 referendum by a right-wing assassin.
“We are now going to be out on the streets for six weeks — it’s going to be fun,” he said, surrounded by members of his party. “And I just had a weather forecast. It’s going to be good weather.” Mr. Johnson’s bare-knuckle tactics have dented his happy warrior image. Last summer he was booed during a visit to Scotland, which wants to stay in the European Union, and where could face the first genuinely hostile crowds of his career during this campaign. He will have to go back to Scotland to try to hold on to Tory seats that are severely endangered by his Brexit policy.
Megan Specia contributed reporting. The Conservative Party will try to make gains among Labour seats in the northern England and the Midlands, where people voted in favor of Brexit. But it will have to defend seats in the south, where people voted to stay, from the Liberal Democrats, whose platform is to revoke Brexit altogether.
“Johnson is gambling that he can make up for the liberal votes he loses in cities and among ‘remain’ voters by attracting Labour voters in rural areas and the hinterlands,” Mr. Menon said. “If the Tories become the party of people in the hinterlands, that would be a huge change in British politics.”
Dominic Grieve, a longtime Tory who broke with Mr. Johnson over his Brexit strategy and was purged from the party, said the Conservatives had “hemorrhaged support from Middle England.” Some voters, he said, would be turned off by Mr. Johnson, who he called a “populist demagogue who is unable to tell the truth.”
Mr. Johnson also has to worry about his right flank, where the Brexit Party could siphon off critical Conservative votes. He supplied that party’s leader, Nigel Farage, with a damaging talking point when he broke his vow to withdraw Britain from the European Union by Oct. 31, with or without a deal.
For the Labour Party, which anguished for days over whether to back an election, the risks are equally high. The party is deeply divided over Brexit, with some of its members ardent proponents of leaving while others are equally passionate about staying.
Mr. Corbyn himself seemed ready, saying on Tuesday that he would campaign all across Britain, including in Mr. Johnson’s home constituency in suburban London. He proved to be a surprisingly effective campaigner against Mrs. May in 2017, but he remains an unpopular figure nationally. Some members of Labour’s rank-and-file worry that an election is a prescription for defeat.
“There’s not really an appetite for an election on the Labour benches,” said David Lammy, a lawmaker from London, at a briefing sponsored by the Foreign Press Association. He predicted it would be “one of the nastiest, most brutal elections of our lifetimes,” and that no party would emerge with a clear majority. “We’re going to end up in the same fix we’re now in,” he said.
Mr. Johnson has viewed an election as the path out of the Brexit quagmire almost from the moment he became prime minister. He called for a vote four times, taunting Mr. Corbyn as a “chlorinated chicken” for resisting (Mr. Corbyn has warned that in the post-Brexit trade deal with the United States, Britons could be forced to buy chemically treated poultry from American exporters).
For all the risks of going to the voters, some analysts said, Mr. Johnson risked more by sitting on his hands. Lawmakers could tie up his Brexit deal with Brussels with amendments and block any other legislation. Commentators have already taken to saying he runs a “zombie government.”
“Admiral Nelson said the boldest measures are the safest,” said Mr. Gimson, referring to the 18th-century naval hero who vanquished Napoleon in the Battle of Trafalgar. “Boris also thinks the boldest measure are the safest.”
Stephen Castle and Megan Specia contributed reporting.