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Will Boris Johnson's Election Gamble Pay Off?

Jamie Dettmer

   No one has ever seen the like before in modern times. Britain's storied
   Parliament has made plenty of history over the centuries -- from the
   rhetorical clashes between the great Victorian rivals William Gladstone
   and Benjamin Disraeli to William Wilberforce's campaign to prohibit
   British ships trafficking in slaves to the Americas.

   The chamber of the House of Commons echoed with Winston Churchill's
   resounding wartime speeches galvanizing the British to stay the course
   in the fight of the nation's life against Adolf Hitler.

   "Even though large tracts of Europe and many old and famous states have
   fallen or may fall into the grip of the Gestapo and all the odious
   apparatus of Nazi rule, we shall not flag or fail," he told the Commons
   on June 4, 1940, days after the British forces were plucked from the
   beaches of Dunkirk.
   
   But the British Parliament's record book is being re-written as Brexit
   sinks its teeth into the country's body politic, tearing apart
   political parties, ripping up well-established conventions and rules
   and turning friend against friend. On Thursday, the brother of Prime
   Minister Boris Johnson, Jo, a pro-EU lawmaker, quit as a cabinet
   minister and MP, saying he was "torn between family loyalty and the
   national interest."

   Amid the high drama, histrionics and frequent breaches of verbal
   propriety traditionally demanded in the 'mother of parliaments,' this
   week has seen a series of startling firsts for British politics.

   No British prime minister has been rebuffed by the House of Commons in
   the fashion Boris Johnson suffered when a majority of lawmakers
   wrestled control of parliamentary business from the government to start
   passing legislation to delay Britain from leaving the European Union.

   For Johnson loyalists and Brexiters this was an exercise in turning the
   British constitution upside down with parliament grabbing the role
   reserved for the government, transforming itself from legislature to
   executive in the process. For pro-EU lawmakers, and others worried
   about the economic impact on jobs and livelihoods from Brexit,
   initiating legislation was a necessary act of accountability and
   oversight and done in the national interest.

   Johnson, who has only been prime minister for six weeks, suffered four
   parliamentary defeats in quick succession -- that has never happened
   before to a British prime minister. "Not a good start," jeered an
   opposition lawmaker after one of the rebuffs.

   Nor has modern British politics seen such a large purge of lawmakers
   from a political party.

   Twenty-one Conservative lawmakers were expelled from the party by
   Downing Street for voting alongside the opposition parties to delay
   Brexit. Among them 79-year-old Ken Clarke, the longest continuously
   sitting British member of Parliament, and former finance minister
   Philip Hammond -- as well as Winston Churchill's grandson, Nicholas
   Soames.

   Asked if this was the end of the Conservative party of his grandfather,
   Soames said: "No. But it's a bad night." Clarke's view is that it might
   mark the end of the Conservative party in all but name. The
   Conservatives have become the "Brexit party re-badged," he lamented.

   And never before have opposition parties blocked a bid by a government
   to hold an early general election. Instead, in a moment of surprising
   unity, they bandied together to block an early election Johnson tried
   to trigger and make as their priority passing legislation to thwart a
   so-called no-deal Brexit.

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