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British MPs on Tuesday approved early parliamentary elections on December 12, in which Prime Minister Boris Johnson hopes to regain a majority and implement his promise to leave the United Kingdom of the European Union.
British MPs voted Tuesday for Prime Minister Boris Johnson's plans to hold early parliamentary elections on 12 December to break the Brexit impasse that has paralyzed the United Kingdom for more than three years.
After several hours of heated debate, the MPs voted by an overwhelming majority of 438 votes against 20 for the organization of the poll wanted by Boris Johnson. The text must still be approved by the Lords, who will consider it Wednesday.
It was the leader's fourth attempt to summon the British to the polls, this time successfully thanks to the strong support of Labor, the main opposition party.
In a strong position in the polls, with a dozen points in advance on average, he hopes to win an absolute majority, which his government is currently lacking. This would finally allow him to honor his promise to implement the Brexit, already postponed three times since his vote by 52% of Britons in June 2016.
More than three years after this referendum, Parliament remains deeply divided over how to implement it. The general elections, originally scheduled for 2022, will be the third in four years, after an advance poll in 2017, already with Brexit in the background, two years after that of 2015.
Long reluctant, the head of Labor, Jeremy Corbyn , ended up resolving to support a poll in December, his prerequisite having been fulfilled: the threat of an exit without agreement of the EU on October 31, nightmare of the economic circles for the disturbances that it would generate, was rejected by the new Brexit postponement granted by Brussels until 31 January.
The Labor leader, who had unsuccessfully called for a vote on 9 December, reacted after the vote by promising " the most ambitious and radical campaign for real change that our country has ever seen ".
In the ranks of the opposition, which defeated a ratification of the divorce agreement torn up by Boris Johnson in Brussels in mid-October, Labor hopes to negotiate their own agreement before submitting it to a referendum, while Europhiles liberal-democrats, who have the wind in their sails, want to cancel Brexit altogether.
Elections are "the only way now to move this country forward, " Prime Minister Boris Johnson told MPs. But even if he leads in the polls, Boris Johnson is at risk, says John Curtice, of the Scottish University Strathclyde. "Boris must win. A Parliament without a majority, and Boris is outside, "he told AFP.
The leader prepared the ground Tuesday by deciding to reinstate 10 of the 21 rebel deputies he had excluded from the party for voting against the strategy of the executive on Brexit.