Prime Minister Boris Johnson blamed his opposition Labour rival for Britain's failure to leave the European Union by Thursday's deadline and promised to deliver Brexit by January - if he wins the upcoming pre-Christmas election. Johnson is riding high in opinion polls going into the December 12 vote that will be Britain's third in four years. But he risks a backlash over his unkept "do or die" promise to take Britain out by October 31 - and again set himself up for another potential fall by promising to meet the next deadline.
The Conservative leader, who wants no more delays to the process, cast himself as a victim of parliamentary opposition parties that refused to follow the wishes of UK voters who chose to leave Europe in the knife-edge 2016 referendum. "After three-and-a-half years, it was perfectly obvious to me that this parliament is just not going to vote Brexit through," Johnson said during a campaign stop at a hospital.
"If you vote for us and we get our programme through, which we will - as a I say, it's oven-ready, it's there to go - we can be out, at the absolute latest, by January next year." Pro-EU campaigners and business executives breathed a sigh of relief that Britain had been given a stay of execution to avoid a Halloween Brexit nightmare that could have seen it crash out of the bloc after 46 years without a plan.
Johnson confounded expectations by securing a revised EU divorce deal that Brussels had long refused to touch. But he was forced to follow through on parliamentary orders and ask EU leaders for more time after Labour mustered enough cross-party support to extend parliamentary debates and delay a final vote. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said he would throw out Johnson's plan and get Brexit "sorted" within the first six months of grabbing power by negotiating more EU-friendly separation terms.
He would then put it up for a vote against the option of simply staying the 27-nation bloc. "We'll let the people decide whether to leave with a sensible deal or remain. It really isn't that complicated," Corbyn told a party rally at a London art centre. "And we, the Labour government, will carry out whatever the people decide."
But the veteran socialist avoided answering a direct question on which way he himself would vote. "It's not about me, it's not any individual on this platform, it's not a presidential election," Corbyn said.
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