Boris Johnson tried to break parliament – now its members must return the favour

Editorial: The House of Commons will continue to block no-deal Brexit. And when the prorogation and Yellowhammer papers come out, there will be nowhere left for the prime minister to turn

At the height of the campaign to replace Theresa May with Boris Johnson, it was claimed that the arrival of an original Leaver, of a man with a sense of destiny and mission, of a figure enjoying a new, fresh mandate from his people (albeit a little under 100,000 Conservative Party members who voted for him), and above all such an energetic statesman, would be transformative.

It would change the dynamics of Brexit. Unlike Ms May, Mr Johnson was expected, as he had promised, to threaten to walk away from the talks with the EU unless he got the Irish backstop, and much else, excised from the UK-EU withdrawal agreement concluded by his predecessor. He would, unlike her, mean business, and leave the EU on 31 October, “do or die”. Mr Johnson promised that Britain would leave the EU with a deal at the end of October if the country has the “will” and the “drive” for Brexit. He promised a “backstopectomy”, and observed that if it was possible to get to the moon and back 50 years ago, then the problem of frictionless trade on the Irish border could be solved. He wanted the nation to rediscover its “sense of mission”.

Maybe, but Mr Johnson seems to be having some trouble with his own sense of mission. The more he and his Svengali-like adviser Dominic Cummings attempt to “take a chainsaw” to the constitutional niceties, the harder things seem to get for them. The Commons has put up a spirited resistance and passed a law forbidding no-deal Brexit. The speaker has pulled a fast one and ensured that this parliament will be selecting his successor, and probably not one to Mr Johnson’s taste. Mr Johnson cannot have his early election. In removing the party whip from the rebels, he has created a guerrilla army on his backbenches with nothing to lose, and destroyed his tiny working majority. He has lambasted the EU and failed to send any proposals to them for a new deal, to the acute embarrassment of all concerned.