Britain's House of Commons
is coming back next week
after its long summer recess.
But already there's
feverish talk
at Westminster about what is
going to happen if the UK has
a no-deal Brexit on October 31.
Here are the three
options that lie ahead.
The first possibility is that
opposition MPs from Labour,
the Scottish Nationalist
party, the Liberal Democrats,
and some rebel Conservatives
come together and pass
legislation which mandates Mr
Johnson to have an extension
of Britain's membership
after October the 31st,
whether he gets a deal or not.
Legislation like that
was passed back in April
to force Theresa May to
extend Britain's membership
beyond March 29, and
it's perfectly possible
that that could happen again.
But it's technically
difficult. It needs time,
and with Brexit no more
than 65-70 days away, MPs
don't have a lot of
time on their hands.
The second possibility, if
legislation can't be passed,
is that MPs decide to bring
down the Johnson government.
They can pass a motion of
no confidence in the Johnson
administration if
they get 50 per cent
plus one MPs on their side.
And that would open
up a two-week period
in which a new caretaker
government could be formed
to introduce an extension.
Now that's what many MPs
call the nuclear option,
but if it does look like
Mr Johnson is taking us out
with no-deal in the
final days of October,
I could well see parliament
going down that road.
The third possibility,
of course,
is that Mr Johnson and
the EU agree a deal
and that it's passed by
the House of Commons.
Now many people say that
is still very unlikely.
There's a huge distance between
the UK government on the one
hand and the European
Union on the other
over the so-called
Irish backstop, which
guarantees a frictionless border
across the island of Ireland.
It's very unclear
whether they're
going to work out a
technical solution which
all sides can agree on.
If that does happen, however,
and if parliament passes it,
then the UK would have
an orderly Brexit.
And although Mr Johnson
is talking tough,
there is a feeling in the EU
that he's being constructive
and that he genuinely
wants a deal.
It's hard to know which
of those three outcomes
we're going to see over the
next few months or, of course,
whether at the
end of October, we
will see the other
outcome, which
is that Britain really
does crash out of the EU
without a deal.
Boris Johnson is
certainly going to try
very hard to get a pact with
the EU in the next few weeks.
It is the outcome he most wants.
But whether he can
bring that off,
I don't think anybody can
predict that at this moment.
