After the government lost its majority in Parliament earlier in the day, Boris Johnson was defeated 328-301 in a vote that grants a cross-party alliance control of the legislative agenda.
Lawmakers will now move to effectively rule out a no-deal Brexit.
MPs will debate the bill, which would prevent Johnson from taking the country out of the EU without a deal, on Wednesday and, in keeping with his threat, Boris will seek a general election.
Read more: Boris Johnson All Set To Force Snap Election As Brexit Train Careens Further Off The Rails
21 Conservative rebels will now be expelled from the party if Johnson makes good on his promise to boot anyone who supported today’s bid to seize control of the agenda. As Bloomberg notes, he “started today with 311 MPs, and a majority of one [and] he’s finishing it with 289 MPs, very much the leader of a minority government”.
Here’s the moment when the vote tally was read:
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“Not a good start, Boris!”, someone shouted.
Sadiq Khan was happy. “Parliament has today taken the first step towards stopping Boris Johnson’s catastrophic no-deal Brexit but we must keep the pressure up”, he tweeted.
Jeremy Corbyn will now apparently force Johnson to let the bill preventing a no-deal Brexit become law in order to move ahead with an election. “Boris Johnson’s authority has crumbled far faster than Theresa May’s”, Bloomberg’s Sebastian Boyd wrote. “There is a high-stakes game being played and it looks like Johnson may have played himself into a corner”.
Tonight we defeated Boris Johnson in his first Commons test and tomorrow we will legislate against his disastrous No Deal plans.
We'll support a vote to call a General Election, so the people can decide our country's future, once the Bill to stop No Deal is law.
— Jeremy Corbyn (@jeremycorbyn) September 3, 2019
Later, Sajid Javid announced another GBP2 billion of funding for government departments following the country’s exit from the EU – assuming they ever actually leave. That would bring the total allocation to Brexit spending to more than 8 billion pounds.
“This new funding will ensure that departments can grasp the opportunities created by Brexit after we leave on October 31”, Javid said, in a statement.
They ain’t leavin’ on October 31. Or at least not without a deal.
It’s good news that ‘a coalition of the willing’ have finally mustered enough support across all parties (across the aisle as we say) to block usurping the parliamentary democracy in the U.K and stop the ‘madness’ of the U.K. crashing out of the EU in a ‘no-deal Brexit.’
Remainers may yet lose the fight as Boris could win a general election and send the UK crashing out of the EU without a deal. As a democrat, however, I will take comfort that such an eventuality would stem from a well-established, albeit flawed, democratic process. When I look at the US, the most troubling aspect of all things Trumpian, is how people have sacrificed the rules of the game in favour of winning. That is the surest path to a country’s longer-term decline. Stupid decisions can be reversed. The decline of institutions, not so much.