Brexit: UK Parliament votes on agreement negotiated by Boris Johnson

The outcome of the vote is very uncertain: the British Parliament meets Saturday, October 19, to decide on the Brexit agreement between London and Brussels, just 12 days from the planned date of exit from the European Union.

Taken off in extremis after laborious negotiations, the agreement is supposed to settle the conditions of the divorce after 46 years of common life, allowing a smooth exit accompanied by a period of current transition at least until the end of 2020.

But its success is suspended by the approval of the British Parliament, which has already been intransigent in the past. MEPs rejected three times the previous exit agreement between former Prime Minister Theresa May and the other 27 members of the European Union.

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Convened for the first time on a Saturday since the Falklands War 37 years ago, the House of Commons will open at 8:30 am GMT (9:30 am local time). Boris Johnson will make a statement to the MPs. It will then be time for debate and then vote. The debate was originally scheduled for 90 minutes; it is no longer limited in time and could last all day.

Boris Johnson has spent all his efforts in recent days to convince members to support his agreement, chaining phone calls and interventions on television.

Now it's time for MPs to #GetBrexitDone 🇬🇧 pic.twitter.com/24DL8BlkE3

Arguing that there was "no better way" than his agreement to leave the EU on October 31, the prime minister urged the elected to imagine a world where the obstacle of Brexit, which paralyzes the British political life for three years, will have been "exceeded". "I think the nation will breathe a great sigh of relief," he added.

A 320-vote majority hard to get

If the agreement is approved, it will still have to be validated by the European Parliament. In case of rejection, Boris Johnson has always said that he prefers an exit without agreement to a new deadline, the Brexit having already been postponed twice. But a law passed by the Parliament requires him to ask for a postponement of three months to the EU.

The prospect of a Brexit without agreement is feared by economic circles, because it could lead according to the forecasts of the government itself shortages of food, gasoline or drugs.

>> Read: Brexit: Can Boris Johnson convince the British Parliament?

The government, without a majority with 288 elected representatives, needs 320 votes to validate its agreement. But the opposition parties have already announced that they oppose it: the centrist liberal-democratic party (19 votes) and the Scottish nationalists SNP (35 votes) are anti-Brexit, the Labor Party (242 votes) believes that the new agreement weakens the rights of workers, the Greens (1 vote) it does not respect the environment ...

Above all, it stuck with the North Irish Unionists of the DUP (10 votes), allied allies of Boris Johnson Westminster, for whom the text grants a different status to Northern Ireland and isolates the British province from the rest of the country.

The government hopes to convince a group of "rebel" Labor, some of whom voted in favor of the agreement negotiated by Theresa May, as well as independents, including deputies excluded from the Conservative Party because they opposed a "no deal ".

Anti-Brexit demonstration in front of Westminster

If the Parliament is divided, so is the British society, nearly three years after the 2016 referendum that decided 52% of the UK's departure from the European bloc. While debates will be in full swing to settle the terms of the divorce, an anti-Brexit protest is planned in Westminster to push for a second referendum.

The decision of the deputies will also be scrutinized across the Channel. Several European leaders urged them to approve it, in order to move to the next phase of negotiations, which will determine the future relationship between the EU and the United Kingdom.

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker warned that a rejection of the text would lead to a "very complicated situation", while French President Emmanuel Macron spoke out against "new delays".

>> To see: New Brexit agreement: text details

Boris Johnson's agreement is supposed to solve the squaring of the circle of the Irish border, on which the process had stumbled until now. The aim is to avoid the return of a physical border between British Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, a member of the EU, to preserve peace on the island.

To this end, it keeps Northern Ireland on paper in the British customs territory but provides for a special regime for goods arriving in the British province, depending on whether they are destined to remain there or to enter the single European market. .

With AFP and Reuters