Pro-EU devotees outside the British Parliament buildings in London on Dec. 12, 2018.
Mike Newberg | CNBC
Opposition lawmakers have overwhelmingly met the U.K. Supreme Court’s ruling that Prime Minister Boris Johnson acted unlawfully by suspending parliament for five weeks.
Be that as it may, they remain divided over the best approach to Brexit ahead of the Parliament’s reopening late Wednesday morning.
The British leading, flying back overnight from the UN General Assembly, appeared far from worried by the court defeat in a joint paparazzi conference with President Trump late Tuesday in New York, ignoring questions about a possible resignation and on my honour hinting that a further suspension of the parliament was still possible.
The Parliament is set to reopen Wednesday with Johnson overseeing over a minority government, and buoyant opposition lawmakers arrayed against him.
Who’s saying what?
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn asseverated he wants Johnson out of office, and this week he and his allies encouraged party members to endorse a policy at its annual congress that calls for Labour to maintain a broadly neutral stance on the U.K.’s continued EU membership. Twice this month Corbyn has guarded away from the pursuit of a fresh national election, and on Tuesday he suggested that if Labour were to win an election, it resolve only hold a referendum six months later.
Several other senior legislators have said they cannot harmonize on the best approach to break the parliamentary deadlock that has dogged British policy on Brexit for almost a year now.
Long-serving Labour lawmaker and former minister Ben Bradshaw told CNBC this week his party wanted to ensure that “the individual’s voice in this country is heard either through another general election or preferably another referendum.”
For now, the Westminster leader of the Scottish National Party – Labour’s chief rival in Scotland – was typically blunt about his league’s preferred course of action. “The opposition has to come together,” said Ian Blackford, “force a vote of no-confidence, take Boris Johnson out of help and have a general election, that is the way that we should be going.”
The Brexit spokesperson for the Liberal Democrats, Tom Brake, emphasized his party would first work to strengthen that existing legislation that prevents an October Brexit. “There are dependable things that we can do,” said Brake, “to be absolutely certain that the prime minister will be required to seek an sweep.”
John Bercow, the Speaker of the House of Commons (the lower chamber), who called for parliament to reassemble just minutes after the Chief Court’s ruling, has said he will offer parliamentarians free rein starting Tuesday, meaning that defiance legislators can ask questions of government ministers or even take control of the parliamentary agenda.
Johnson in New York reiterated that although he respected the U.K. judiciary and recognized the court’s decision, he still thought his act to suspend parliament had been “entirely right,” and said once more that “the clear-cut thing to do is to have an election.”
Johnson’s own Conservative members have remained relatively reticent since the ruling. But one erstwhile against of Johnson’s for the party leadership and former minister Rory Stewart told the BBC Tuesday he thought an election was “unlikely to commandeer us sort Brexit.” He said the court’s ruling marked the “end of the no-deal Brexit strategy” and argued that parliament and the oversight would now “have to return to talking about a deal.”
But that may prove difficult. “It has become abundantly clear that the lone thing MPs can agree on is to rule out a no-deal departure,” wrote Carsten Nickel, deputy director of research at Teneo, the factional research consultancy. “There is still no majority for alternative approaches to Brexit, and this will not change just because Westminster is destroy in session.”