London: British Prime Minister Boris Johnson suffered yet another setback Thursday after MPs rejected his call to briefly suspend their business for his party’s conference, highlighting the hostility he faces in parliament just weeks before Brexit.
In his seventh successive defeat in parliament, MPs voted to reject his call for three days off next week to hold his Conservative Party’s annual conference.
Parliament usually holds a recess during all the main party’s conferences, but the vote came as tensions among MPs reached boiling point over Britain’s European Union (EU) exit next month.
The Supreme Court had ruled Tuesday that Boris Johnson’s decision to suspend parliament for five weeks was unlawful, as it had the effect of frustrating lawmakers ahead of the Brexit deadline.
MPs reconvened Wednesday but, in a stormy session, Johnson showed no contrition and instead vowed to press ahead with his plan to leave the EU, no matter what. His inflammatory language drew accusations – including from his sister Rachel – of stoking divisions in a country still split over the 2016 referendum vote for Brexit.
Boris Johnson only took office in July but his threat to leave the EU, October 31 with or without a divorce deal with Brussels has put him on a collision course with MPs.
Thursday’s vote was the seventh in a row that Johnson has lost in the Commons, where he no longer has a majority and where most MPs oppose a ‘no-deal’ exit.
Tensions reached boiling point Wednesday night during a combative, three-hour debate in which Johnson condemned the court ruling and accused MPs of trying to undermine Brexit. He repeatedly slammed parliament for passing a ‘surrender act’ requiring him to seek to delay Brexit if he fails to reach a deal with the EU in time.
Johnson, who also spoke of MPs betraying the referendum, was asked to tone down his language by friends of Jo Cox, an anti-Brexit MP murdered by a Nazi sympathiser during the referendum campaign.
But Johnson said that the best way to honour her memory would be ‘to get Brexit done’, while dismissing one female MP’s concerns as ‘humbug’.
Jo Cox’s husband Brendan said the exchanges made him feel ‘a bit sick’ – while Johnson’s own sister Rachel said Thursday that the remark was ‘tasteless’.
There was also criticism from Brussels, where Britain’s most senior EU official, Commissioner Julian King said Johnson’s language was ‘crass and dangerous’.
AFP