Boris Johnson’s fate is still partly in the hands of the European Union

Editorial: Although the new no-deal legislation compels an unwilling prime minister to request an extension to Article 50 under certain circumstances, there is no guarantee that the European Union would grant it

Friday 06 September 2019 23:03 BST
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Boris Johnson says he does not want to contemplate resignation

Rarely has British politics been so polarised, and rarely has it been so unpredictable. It has probably never been both.

Boris Johnson’s first disastrous week as a full-time prime minister is a now familiar catalogue of successive disasters. As Mr Johnson himself once quipped, in the days when he was still funny: “My friends, as I have discovered myself, there are no disasters, only opportunities. And, indeed, opportunities for fresh disasters.”

And yet he is, as far as can be told, ahead in the polls, and he outstrips Jeremy Corbyn on most of the qualities desired in a premier. Neither of those achievements may be saying much, given the opposition’s low ebb, but it is the hope to which Mr Johnson’s party must cling as it observes its takeover by Dominic Cummings, and its conversion into a carbon copy of the Brexit Party, minus Nigel Farage.

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