Britain to Hold Election in December, Opening New Phase in Brexit Odyssey
The vote throws back to the British people the bedeviling issue of how, or even if, their country should leave the European Union.
NY TIMES
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 held up.
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.
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.
“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.”
