Here are the important points about today’s emergency vote on Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal – which turned into a vote on whether the Prime Minister should write to the EU requesting a three-month Brexit delay.
First, Johnson would have won if Northern Ireland’s ten DUP, his supposed partners in government, had not voted against him.
Johnson has paid a price for agreeing a Brexit settlement for Northern Ireland which the DUP sees as betraying the union of Northern Ireland and Great Britain.
Second, the narrowness of the defeat for Johnson implies that there is a route for him to secure Brexit by October 31 or shortly after that – because he needs just nine MPs to change their votes to take him across the line.
And there are six former Tory MPs who would back him at the last, and maybe three or four Labour MPs.
Third, it is damaging to the integrity of the UK that Johnson’s Brexit will be delivered, if it ever is, in the teeth of opposition from the largest parties in Scotland and Northern Ireland, namely the SNP and the DUP respectively.
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