There’s an assumption in Westminster that the Labour Party would have to back a snap general election if Boris Johnson called one this week. Jeremy Corbyn has said that ‘an election is the democratic way forward’, while his Shadow Brexit minister Jenny Chapman said Labour would vote against one that came after 31 October, adding that ‘having a general election becomes one of the few ways that we are able to prevent no deal’.
But that doesn’t necessarily mean that Labour will provide the numbers to approve an election motion in the Commons. I have been speaking to MPs in the upper echelons of the party and on the backbenches and many of them privately say they would vote against the motion, even if whipped to do so. They see it as a trap which Johnson could then use to force through a no-deal Brexit by using prerogative proclamation power to move polling day to after 31 October.
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