Britain's House of Lords on Friday approved a bill designed to prevent the country from leaving the European Union next month without a divorce agreement.
Parliament's unelected upper chamber voted for the bill, which has already been passed by the elected House of Commons. It will become law within days once it gets the formality of Queen Elizabeth II's assent.
The measure, backed by opposition lawmakers and Conservative rebels, compels Prime Minister Boris Johnson to ask the EU to postpone Brexit if no divorce agreement is in place by Oct. 19.
Johnson insists Britain must leave the EU in 55 days, and says an election is the only way to break the deadlock that has seen lawmakers repeatedly reject the divorce deal on offer but also block attempts to leave the EU without one.
He wants to go to the public Oct. 15, two weeks before the scheduled Brexit date of Oct. 31, but needs the support of two-thirds of lawmakers to trigger a snap election.
Johnson lost a vote on the same question this week, but he plans to try again Monday.
Britain's opposition parties said Friday that they won't support Johnson's call for an election.
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After discussions, lawmakers from several opposition parties said they would not back an election unless the government asked the EU to postpone Brexit, removing the risk the U.K. could crash out without a deal.
Pro-EU lawmakers want to hold off on triggering an election until the Brexit delay has actually been secured, fearing Johnson will try to get out of the commitment.
"I do not trust the prime minister to do his duty," said Liz Saville Roberts, leader in Parliament of the Welsh party Plaid Cymru.
She said lawmakers needed to be sitting in Parliament in late October, rather than on the election campaign trail, to ensure Britain does not crash out of the EU. That makes an election before November unlikely.
The Conservative Party on Friday tweeted a mocked-up image of Labor Party leader Jeremy Corbyn in a chicken suit, and Johnson said he had "never known an opposition in the history of democracy that's refused to have an election."
"I think obviously they don't trust the people, they don't think that the people will vote for them, so they're refusing to have an election," he said.
Scottish National Party leader Nicola Sturgeon tweeted: "An early general election is now a question of 'when' not 'if' -- but Johnson mustn't be allowed to dictate the timing as a device to avoid scrutiny and force through a 'no deal' Brexit."
Johnson became prime minister in July after promising Conservatives that he would complete Brexit and break the impasse that has paralyzed Britain's politics since voters decided in June 2016 to leave the bloc and which brought down his predecessor, Theresa May.
After only six weeks in office, however, his plans are in crisis. The EU refuses to renegotiate the deal it struck with May, which has been rejected three times by Britain's Parliament.
Johnson's push to leave the EU at the end of next month is facing opposition in the courts as well as in Parliament. Most economists say a no-deal Brexit would cause severe economic disruption and plunge the U.K. into recession.
Johnson enraged his opponents by announcing he would suspend Parliament at some point next week until Oct. 14, leaving just over two weeks to the deadline. Critics accused him of subverting democracy and carrying out a "coup."
Transparency campaigner Gina Miller took the government to court, arguing the suspension was an "unlawful abuse of power."
On Friday, a panel of three High Court judges ruled against her but said the case can be appealed to the Supreme Court, which has set a hearing for Sept. 17.
Outside court, Miller said she was disappointed with the ruling but would not give up.
"We need to protect our institutions," she said. "It is not right that they should be shut down or bullied, especially at this momentous time in our history."
Johnson insists he wants to secure a divorce deal, and his chief Brexit negotiator, David Frost, was in Brussels Friday for talks with EU officials.
The bloc says Britain has made no concrete proposals for changes to May's rejected deal, and EU officials said it seems increasingly likely Britain will depart without an agreement.
"The situation in Britain is quite a mess now, and we don't know what is happening there," said Finnish Prime Minister Antti Rinne, whose country currently holds the EU's rotating presidency.
"It seems very obvious that we are not getting Brexit with an agreement," he said.
PUBLIC DISCONTENT
Regardless of whether British voters chose to leave or remain in the EU, the latest Brexit developments in Westminster this week have united them on one front: They have lost faith in their politicians.
"They're all idiots. Stuck up, stupid, useless idiots," said Liam Peters, 37, a carpenter from Barling, in southeast England, who voted to leave in the 2016 referendum. "We voted for a very simple thing: to leave. We didn't vote for deals or endless negotiations. We just want to get out, but our politicians are useless, and they have turned one of the most important decisions in our history into a farce."
After three years of painstaking negotiations, votes and delays to Brexit, many "leavers" hoped that Johnson would achieve what he said he would and wrench Britain out of the bloc, "do or die."
"Boris is just as useless as everyone else. He's a joke," said Tony Edwards, a 64-year-old retired truck driver from Essex in southeast England. "All the MPs are corrupt; they just care about collecting their paychecks. The best solution at this point is to shut down Parliament and elect new representatives because this Parliament does not represent the public. We voted out, and out means out."
Lizzie Burton, a 28-year-old advertising agent from London, said she wants a second referendum and believes that a significant portion of the public who voted to leave the European Union in 2016 was misled by campaigners.
"The true reality of Brexit is now out there in the public sphere," said Burton, who voted "Remain" in the referendum, "and I'm convinced that many people have taken stock of that reality and changed their minds."
Last weekend, tens of thousands gathered in London to protest what they decried as Johnson's disregard for democratic norms in his pursuit of Brexit. "If you shut down Parliament, we shut down the streets!" the demonstrators chanted.
But the discontent was not limited to Johnson's opponents. Conservatives also expressed dismay at his actions, particularly the sacking of the 21 Conservative members of Parliament who voted against his Brexit strategy, when he himself was elected prime minister by about 100,000 party members.
"This is not the Conservative Party I voted for," Belinda Ashton, a 48-year-old housekeeping manager, said on Thursday as she flicked through a tabloid at Liverpool station in London that ran the headline, "Britain's worst PM."
"There is no way I would have voted for a party led by Boris Johnson," Ashton continued. "Just the fact that he can get elected by a handful of people and then come in and sack so many MPs that were elected by the public, like a Middle Eastern dictator. It's absurd."
Even though she does not support the main opposition Labor Party or Corbyn, Ashton believes that his leadership would increase the chances of a second referendum, which she supports.
Sitting in the garden of an East London pub, Matt Thomas, a 42-year-old insurance agent, laughed at the mention of the word Brexit.
"It's just theatrics, it's actually pretty entertaining," he said. "But I'm not too worried, because what we've seen this week is that Parliament is still capable of doing its job by averting BoJo's chances of delivering a calamity and driving this country off the cliff."
Information for this article was contributed by Jill Lawless and Lorne Cook of The Associated Press, and by Ceylan Yeginsu of The New York Times.
A Section on 09/07/2019