A No-Confidence Vote Designed to Stop a No Deal Brexit is the Best Way to… Guarantee a No Deal Brexit

The House of Commons is now in recess, and the new Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, has ordered government departments up and down Whitehall to step up preparations for leaving the EU on 31 October without a withdrawal agreement. Meanwhile, many anti-No-Deal Tory MPs, Dominic Grieve being the most vocal of them, have indicated that they are prepared to vote no confidence in their own government to prevent a No Deal Brexit.

The irony with this is that it’s the best way to guarantee a No Deal Brexit. And the reason comes down primarily to timing.

The House of Commons is next due to sit on Tuesday 3 September after its summer recess. This means that the earliest a Vote of No Confidence can be debated in the Commons is Wednesday 4 September.

If this vote passes, then a two-week period begins to see if the House of Commons can find a government in which it has confidence. At this point, Jeremy Corbyn would be likely to give it a go, but the Parliamentary maths make it slightly difficult: even if he combines with the SNP, LibDems, The Independent Group (formerly Change UK), Plaid Cymru, Greens, and The Independents (split from Change UK), the combined total (309) is less than the Conservatives on their own (311). So the prospect of an alternative government being formed is rather remote.

That brings us to Wednesday 18 September, when this two-week period is up. On Thursday, the Prime Minister will have to go to Buckingham Palace to request a dissolution of Parliament and a general election. A Royal Proclamation will be issued to declare the dissolution of Parliament, but according to the House of Commons Library, that can’t take effect on the same day that it’s issued. As general elections are held on Thursdays in this country, and as the dissolution takes place 25 working days before an election under the Fixed Term Parliaments Act (2011), this means that dissolution will probably wait until Thursday 26 September.

With Parliament dissolved at this point, there is no mechanism by which any Withdrawal Agreement can be approved. The government would still have the ability to seek an extension of the UK’s membership, and to have that enshrined in UK law under the existing powers of the EU Withdrawal Act (2018). Whether they’d use that power is another matter though (if you believe the Prime Minister, he won’t use it).

Five weeks after Parliament is dissolved, we get to election day, on Thursday 31 October. This is currently Exit Day, meaning we would leave the EU as votes are being counted up and down the country (well, Sunderland South and Newcastle Central may have finished, but everyone else is still going).

Of course, there is no law in the UK saying that we must hold elections on a Thursday. It’s just tradition we’ve been doing since 1935. But holding an election on the previous Monday isn’t going to do much, given there is usually a two-week period between the election and the State Opening of Parliament. This means, realistically, the latest an election can be held with a realistic prospect of blocking No Deal would be mid-October.

And so, if Parliament wants to block a No Deal Brexit, a Vote of No Confidence in the Government is the best way to backfire. They will need to find some other way of stopping it if that is their intent.