Brexit: What Would Odysseus Do?

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Prime Minister Boris Johnson, a classics scholar while a student at Oxford, may be thinking of Odysseus and his men who, homeward bound after their exploits at Troy, must navigate their ship between the twin dangers of Scylla and Charybdis — a six-headed sea monster and whirlpool, respectively — that threaten their destruction.

Even more gruesomely, Mr. Johnson, at the helm of the ship of state, must extricate his ministry from a constitutional dilemma on Britain’s course for independence from the European Union.

Mere weeks before the UK is legislated to leave the EU, Brexit opponents have devised a Greek tragedy to stymie the Government. Remainers passed a motion allowing them to take over the “order paper,” effectively giving them control of parliamentary business. Their objective? To bring a bill before the Prime Minister, forbidding Britain to leave the EU on WTO terms, if he is unable to negotiate a successful trade deal before the October deadline.

Such is only the official rationale to stop “No Deal,” though. Don’t be fooled. The ultimate goal is to keep Britain ensnared in Brussels’ grip, through a withdrawal agreement that keeps it bound to regulatory and judicial fiat. Better yet, to annul Article 50 altogether and keep the UK within the EU, voiding the 2016 referendum to exit.

Adding insult to injury, Mr. Johnson cannot call for a general election to give him a fresh mandate. Never mind that he is leading in the polls. Legislation enacted in 2011, the Fixed-term Parliaments Act, requires a two-thirds vote in the Commons for the prime minister to request the Crown to “drop the writs.” So the Government faces the prospect of being legally mandated to go to Brussels to request an extension without being able to call for an election to avoid this humiliation.

Boris confronts the Brexit version of Scylla and Charybdis.

However, a former director of the Libertarian Alliance, Sean Gabb, thinks there may be a way for Mr. Johnson to get his early election. It is the “Civil Contingencies Act,” authorized in 2004 by a Labor government. The Act declares an emergency “an event or situation which threatens serious damage to human welfare.” A “promising excuse,” Mr. Gabb believes, “to cover what the Opposition claims would be the effect of a No-Deal Brexit.”

All Mr. Johnson need do, as a “senior Minister of the Crown,” is to announce an “emergency” and presto, suspend the Fixed-term Parliaments Act and head up the election campaign. It may not be cricket but if “the opposition parties have spent this year turning the Constitution upside down,” as Mr. Gabb writes, “who could complain if the Government now joined in the fun?”

To wit: “The Act was passed to keep us in our place. What joy if its first and preferably only use were to wipe the smiles presently glued to Labor faces.” Despite the opportunity for epic epicaricacy, though, this option may well prove prohibitively provocative.

Another perilous possibility is for Mr. Johnson to resign the premiership to force an election. In this scenario, he would remain leader of the Conservative party, while the impossible challenge of mollifying Parliament falls to someone else. The idea of an alternative administration, a “national unity government,” was mooted in August. As a trial balloon, it burst even as Remainers blew hot air into it. Britons didn’t much like the idea and, as to who would front this caretaker government, Labor leader Jeremy Corbyn could rate no higher than third place in public esteem.

Given the fluidity of MPs’ loyalties and the whims of “the Fates,” moreover, Mr. Johnson dasn’t resign and find himself permanently out of office and, likely, cashiered as party leader by dumbfounded Conservatives.

The prime minister is clearly cursed with want of choice. No simple analogy is available. One, though, may well ask: How did Odysseus resolve his dilemma? He was advised to steer nearer the sea monster than the whirlpool, for “better by far to lose six men and keep your ship than lose your entire crew.”

That would suggest going for Dr. Gabb’s gamble: to sacrifice public popularity, rather than resign the premiership and risk all — especially British independence.

________

Mr. MacLean, a contributing editor of the Sun, blogs at The Organic Tory. Image: “Odysseus facing the choice between Scylla and Charybdis,” painting by Henry Fuseli, 1794/6, via Wikipedia.


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