The Daily - Parliament Strikes Back in Britain

Episode Date: September 9, 2019

In a battle over what kind of democracy would prevail in Britain, Prime Minister Boris Johnson seemed to have gained the upper hand by cutting Parliament out of Brexit — until last week. Guest: Mark Landler, the London bureau chief of The New York Times. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Background reading: In Washington, scarcely a handful of Republicans have stood up to President Trump. In comparison, Prime Minister Boris Johnson has found lawmakers in his Conservative Party to be much more rebellious.Mr. Johnson has received messages of support from President Trump, and there are some obvious parallels in the rise of the two leaders. But the “bromance” between Mr. Johnson and Mr. Trump is more complex than it might seem.Mr. Johnson’s chief aide, Dominic Cummings, who appeared to revel in the feud with Parliament, has become a lightning rod for criticism of the government’s strategy.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Today, in the battle over what kind of democracy would prevail in Britain, Prime Minister Boris Johnson seemed to have the upper hand by cutting Parliament out of Brexit. Until last week. Mark Lambert on the latest from Britain. It's Monday, September 9th. Hello? Mark?

Hi. Hi. I'm Michael. Hey. Hey there. So you're in the London Bureau. Hi. I can hear you, Michael. Hey. Hey there. So you're in the London Bureau right now. I am. And you're on a landline.

I am. I think this office is pretty quiet. I closed the door and I don't think anyone's going to bother me. Oh, you have an office now. I got a corner office. I got two windows. I'm sitting here looking at double-decker buses. Living the dream.

Mm-hmm. Okay. We're going to get started. Are you recording? Okay. Yeah. I'm sitting here looking at double-decker buses. Living the dream. Mm-hmm. Okay, we're going to get started. Are you recording? Okay, yeah, I'm recording. Okay, so Mark, you just became the London Bureau Chief after several years covering the Trump administration, being a White House reporter. This is quite a moment to make that leap. I guess you could say it's a little bit like the frying pan to the fire metaphor. There's probably more newsy situations you could parachute into, but it's kind of hard to imagine. There are political fireworks in Britain this morning over a surprise move today by British Prime Minister Boris Johnson to suspend Parliament.

Now, here's what it will do. Parliament was supposed to sit again on Monday for a number of weeks, but instead this will suspend Parliament the week of September 10th, and it won't resume until October 14th. Justice Britain is to leave the EU at the end of October. Your critics will say this is an insult to democracy and denying the MPs the time they need to debate and possibly vote on Brexit. Well, that is completely untrue. If you look at what we're doing, we're bringing forward a new legislative programme. Are we going to stop the coup?

Yes! Are we going to save democracy? Yes! Stop Brexit, stop the coup. Stop Brexit, stop the coup. Stop Brexit, stop the coup! Stop Brexit, stop the coup! Stop Brexit, stop the coup! Stop Brexit, stop the coup!

So, in our last episode about Brexit, we spoke to our colleague, Katrin Benhold, just after Boris Johnson had suspended Parliament and basically cut them out of the decision-making process about how Brexit would move forward. And Katrin talked about how that had set up this question about what version of democracy would prevail in Britain. Should it be the version that prioritizes the popular will of the British people who voted for Brexit with or without a deal with the EU, which is what Boris Johnson wants?

Or should the version of democracy be allowing Parliament, the people's representatives, to play a major role in what leaving the EU looks like? So how has this all unfolded in the days since Boris Johnson made that move? Well, I think the answer is that it unfolded resoundingly in favor of Parliament. As Parliament reconvened on Tuesday, because remember, Boris Johnson's suspension of Parliament doesn't kick in for another week or so. There was an atmosphere of high drama. The members, order!

Order! Order! I say to the Chancellor of the Duchy that when he turns up at our children's school as a parent, he's a very well behaved fellow. He wouldn't dare behave like that in front of MPs going on TV, on the radio. There used to be this phrase, the one nation Tory. This is now one dogma Tory. It's a Brexit party, re-badged. Complaining about Boris Johnson having committed a constitutional outrage.

It is a constitutional outrage. This is extraordinary. He needs to be held to account by Parliament, not by shutting down Parliament. And all of this emotion climaxed. And of course, I think one of the most remarkable things that took place during the statement was to see the member for Bracknell cross the floor. Prime Minister, you've lost your majority. With a member of Boris Johnson's own conservative party crossing the aisle in front of the prime minister to sit with members of the Liberal Democratic Party, an act which deprived Johnson

in one stroke of his majority in parliament. He isn't winning friends in Europe. He's losing friends at home. His is a government with no mandate, no morals, and as of today, no majority. So after this very stormy start, the next thing that happens is... Tonight, the United Kingdom has been plunged into even deeper political chaos. would effectively say to Boris Johnson, you can't go to Brussels and pull Britain out of the European Union unless you make a deal with the European Union first. A majority of British lawmakers, including some members of Prime Minister Boris Johnson's own party, voted to stop Johnson's plan to leave the European Union without a withdrawal agreement. Not a good start, Boris. without a withdrawal agreement.

Not a good start, Boris. Order. The ayes to the right, 328. The noes to the left, 301. So the ayes have it, the ayes have it. Unlock. So that's the first major defeat he suffers in his term as prime minister, and it's a big one. There is no consent in this House to leave the European Union without

a deal. There is no majority for no deal in the country. Because it goes straight to the heart of what Boris Johnson said he would do as prime minister. And that is to withdraw on October 31st, deal or no deal, regardless of this situation. So when that one conservative lawmaker theatrically flipped on the floor of Parliament, it turned out that was a signal of a bigger, growing uprising within Boris Johnson's party over this approach he was taking to Brexit, to try to cut Parliament out and just kind of crash this thing through. That's right. And it's really very unprecedented.

I mean, the Conservative Party, British parties in general, have iron discipline. So to see 21 lawmakers peel off and vote against the Prime Minister and the government is really a wholly unprecedented development in British politics. So from the very first session of Parliament, the British people understood that what they were witnessing was something entirely new in their modern political history. And what exactly is underlying these defections and rejection of Boris Johnson's plan? I mean, why is this so unwanted

that even members of his own party are rising up against him? Well, the basic fear is that if Britain withdraws from the European Union with no agreement in place, overnight it will cause a multitude of major problems. You could imagine trucks that transport food and medicine from Europe into Britain

being stuck at the border in Calais in France. You could imagine chaos at the airports as people who are used to traveling back and forth without passports suddenly face the prospect of having to show identification. You risk, in short, havoc. Havoc that could really hurt the economy, but could also further polarize the debate over Brexit. So I think that even within Boris Johnson's party, which remember, is a party that wholeheartedly

supports the goal of pulling out of Europe, the idea of pulling out in this disorderly, abrupt way just scared a lot of the members of Johnson's own party. And that fear is what motivated this rebellion. But to these 21 rebels, he's setting Britain on a course that they feel ultimately will be economically and politically destructive. So they view their role as saying, hey, wait a minute, we want to deliver Brexit, but we want to do it in a responsible way. And this is not the responsible way to do it. So how did the prime minister respond to this rebellion, to this move in parliament? Boris Johnson does two things.

The ruling conservatives are in turmoil. Boris Johnson has kicked out 21 members of his own party after they voted against him to seize control of the parliamentary agenda. The first thing he does is he carries out what you almost have to call a Stalinist purge of these rebels. He kicks them out of the party. Wow. I would have to say Boris Johnson really had the worst week. I mean, here he is. He's new. He lost every one of his first votes in Parliament,

which is unprecedented. He purged 21 people in his own party because they didn't support him. I mean, and I think it's kind of stunning. And it leads to this extraordinary tableau of these conservative MPs, some of whom have served for decades, some of whom are elders of the party, giving these emotional farewell speeches in the House of Commons.

You have the grandson of Winston Churchill, Nicholas Soames. Mr. Speaker, I'm not standing on the next election, and I am thus approaching the end of 37 years' service to this house, of which I have been proud and honored beyond words to be a member. I'm truly very sad that it should end in this way. Speaking very emotionally about all the years he spent in Parliament, you have titans of British politics like Kenneth Clark, who's known as the father of the House,

the former Chancellor of the Exchequer, a man who might well have been Prime Minister himself. Do you recognise your party tonight? No, it's been taken over by a rather knockabout sort of character who's got this bizarre crash-it-through philosophy in charge. Talking about a political situation and a party that they no longer recognized. A cabinet which is the most right-wing cabinet any conservative party's ever produced, but the Prime Minister comes and talks total rubbish to us.

And so it was this really dramatic moment where you saw pillars of the British political establishment just suddenly knocked down in the most brutal fashion. Mark, why would the prime minister do this to members of his own party, basically inflict this kind of damage to his own members at a time when he, I have to imagine, needs them more than ever? Shouldn't he be, you know, cozying up to them? You would think so. But above all, what Boris Johnson wants to do is send a message of ideological purity to his pro-Brexit voters. He wants to tell those voters that I'm going to rid the party of anyone that will stand in the way of getting Britain out of the European Union. So this was less about settling scores with MPs, many of whom he's known well for years, served with. It's really more about sending this emphatic message to the hardcore pro-Brexit constituency

that increasingly drives the conservative party and saying, we are not going to let anything slow us down, including these internal obstacles. So this is very much in keeping with the prime minister's message that this is now his party, the conservative party, the party of the people, of the Brexiteers. And if you're not with me, and if you're not with them, then who needs you?

That's right. It basically is unambiguous. It's emphatic. He does not leave himself open to any charge of being soft on Brexit, ready to do a deal, ready to compromise. So you said that there were two things he did. What was the second? Well, the second thing he did is he called for a snap

election. The country must now decide whether the leader of the opposition or I go to those negotiations in Brussels on the 17th of October to sort this out. He said, in effect, I think the only way to resolve this impasse is to go to the voters. If they want what I've offered, which is a swift exit from Europe, then they will give me a mandate to go to Brussels and do that. If they don't want that, I'll be defeated and someone else can go to Brussels. And Mark, the prime minister can do that. He can call for an election whenever it's politically convenient for him and try to change the composition of the government that might stand in his way. Yeah, that's one of the prerogatives of the prime minister.

And in Boris Johnson's case, he's viewing this in a couple of ways. One, if he wins, he gets a popular mandate to go to Brussels and drive a hard bargain with the European Commission and presumably emerge with a better deal for Britain. On a more practical level, if he wins, there'll be more Conservative Party members sitting in Parliament, and some of the bad arithmetic he's been facing on votes related to Brexit become much easier for him.

But there is a wrinkle to all this, which is that although he has the right to call an election, he needs a two-thirds vote in Parliament to get an election scheduled. So he has the power to call it, but he still needs to bring a majority of the existing Parliament behind him in order to make it happen. So do these tactics work for Boris Johnson, expelling disloyal conservatives and threatening an election that could give him a mandate and weaken the opposition? The short answer is no.

Because the very next day, everything goes against him. Everything goes against him. We'll be right back. So, Mark, Boris Johnson calls for a special election, but it turns out he needs a two-thirds vote from Parliament to make that happen. So what actually happens? Opposition leaders have roundly rejected his call for a general election next month. He doesn't get his two-thirds majority for an election.

Mr. Johnson declared he had never known an opposition in the history of democracy that's refused to have an election. So in effect, he's stuck. He's boxed in on his big goal of pulling Britain out of the EU, and he's not able to move ahead with the election, the thing he was hoping would break the logjam, would give him the mandate. So basically this all backfires. It all backfires. He loses more votes than any incoming prime minister in recent British history. And he finds himself in far worse shape than he

was before all this started. And that leaves the Brexit situation where exactly? Well, it leaves, frankly, everything in a state of paralysis and confusion. By the end of the week in London, one of the questions on people's minds were, would Boris Johnson simply have to resign? Really? Well, if you take the Prime Minister at his word...

Can you make a promise today to the British public that you will not go back to Brussels and ask for another delay to Brexit? Yes. And... I can. And would you rather... I'd rather be dead in a ditch. I hate banging on about Brexit.

He has said he would rather die in a ditch than have to go to Brussels and ask for an extension of Britain's departure. Yet as things stand today, that's exactly what Boris Johnson will have to do. And if all of this were not enough, this week of back-to-back defeats, Boris Johnson had to endure the indignity of his own brother, Joe Johnson, who is also a member of parliament and a minister in the government, announcing that he too was going to resign because, as he put it, he was torn between family loyalty and the national interest. Tell us when you're planning to resign. I haven't had any further comments to say other than it's been an honor to be MP for Orpington and a minister under three governments, but it's time to move on and I've got to get to work. Sorry, I beg your pardon. See you, folks. This is a very tight-knit family. So the fact that Joe Johnson felt obliged to take this step

really says something about the depth of his concern about a no-deal Brexit, about the course that his brother Boris Johnson has the country going on. So just to be clear, those people opposed to Johnson right now in Parliament, they are insisting on going back to the European Union to negotiate some kind of an exit. And so if Johnson is unwilling to do that, he might be out of office. But I guess the question is, is the EU willing to actually enter

these kinds of negotiations? Aren't they pretty fed up with Britain at this point? The EU is completely fed up with Britain at this point. They believe that they had months of good faith negotiations with Boris Johnson's predecessor, Theresa May. They offered her an agreement. She brought that agreement back to Parliament. It was overwhelmingly defeated, not once, but several times.

And there's absolutely no indication from European officials that Boris Johnson is going to get a better or different outcome than Theresa May did. And whether or not he holds an election is being largely dismissed in Europe. Their view is we have given Britain the best deal it's going to get. And if Britain doesn't want that deal, it's time for them to simply leave. What do you make of this remarkable sequence of events, your first full week as London Bureau Chief? Well, there's a couple of ways to look at it. One is that this is just a situation of overwhelming chaos, confusion, paralysis, overwhelming chaos, confusion, paralysis, finger pointing. So on one level, it looks like dysfunction, you know, on a grand scale. But if you dig beyond that, if you sort of look a little

closer, what you see is that this was really a week in which the checks and balances in the British political system really worked. You have the prime minister coming in with this hardline, even reckless approach to Brexit, embodied in his decision to suspend debate in parliament, to sort of circumvent the normal functioning of parliament by sending the MPs home. And then you've got this coalition of members of his own party and the opposition coming together

to put a brake on the prime minister to head off some of these most extreme outcomes and that's kind of what makes british democracy so unique that there is this set of conventions, of folkways, that impose a level of moderation on these proceedings. And we really did see a victory for that in Parliament, a victory that was not at all clear when the House of Commons convened at the beginning of the week. So, Mark, you're saying that even though this all looked especially chaotic, that actually what we just saw was democratic institutions holding, functioning, and succeeding. But of course, the other way of looking at this,

and the way Boris Johnson, I assume, looks at it, is that the will of the people has just been subverted, that they want Brexit with or without a deal, and that Parliament, what you just described as the kind of assertive functioning of democracy in Britain, just stood in their way. Yeah, that's right. Boris Johnson's argument will be, I want to go to the people to put this to the people. And these MPs, Britain's political elite, is standing in the way of popular sentiment. And that will be the core of the message that he brings to the British public as he attempts to turn this situation around.

And how are you feeling that the British system is holding up compared to the American system that you know so well? If we put these two democracies side by side, how does it stack up? Well, one thing that is very striking to me in covering this rebellion in the conservative party is to compare it to the Republican Party in the United States. And there, of course, you see barely a handful of Republicans who have stood up to President Trump. This is a Republican Party that is 100% under his control. He has engineered a total takeover of the Republican Party. I think Boris Johnson tried in the past two weeks to do the same thing over here.

I think this rebellion shows that the party wasn't going to stand for it. I think it's also fair to say that Boris Johnson's having a tougher time in his populist crusade than Donald Trump is in the United States. Mark, thank you very much. Thank you, Michael. After we spoke with Mark, another member of Boris Johnson's conservative party resigned in protest. This time, a top minister in his government, Amber Rudd, who said she could not sit by and watch what she called Johnson's, quote, assault on decency and democracy. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. The Trump administration said it was calling off, for now,

the year-long negotiations between the U.S. and the Taliban to end the war in Afghanistan after the Taliban took credit for a car bombing in Kabul that killed 12 people, including a U.S. soldier. We're going to walk away from a deal if others try to use violence to achieve better ends in a negotiation. It's not right. It's not appropriate. It killed an American and it made no sense for the Taliban to be rewarded for that kind of bad behavior. The negotiations appeared to be on the verge of a peace deal, so much so that leaders of the Taliban and the Afghan government were on their way to Camp David

for a secret meeting with Trump. A meeting Secretary of State Mike Pompeo defended on Sunday in interviews with CNN and NBC. Did anybody bring up whether it was appropriate to have the Taliban set foot on Camp David? Well, there were lots of discussions around that. Camp David has a long history, an important history, and it's also had an important role in complex peace negotiations, sometimes with some pretty bad actors,

as you well know, Chuck. The Taliban had not agreed to stop attacking Americans in advance of a peace deal. But in a tweet, Trump wrote, quote, If they cannot agree to a ceasefire during these very important peace talks and would even kill 12 innocent people, then they probably don't have the power to negotiate a meaningful agreement anyway. And the leader of a prestigious lab at MIT

has resigned from the university and from the board of the New York Times over revelations that he solicited far greater donations from Jeffrey Epstein than previously known and tried to hide the source of the money. The New Yorker magazine reported that the lab's director,

Joey Ito, instructed staff to conceal Epstein's donations as anonymous to avoid scrutiny of his record as a sex offender who had solicited minors. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.