All the talk about a ‘people vs politicians’ election is another bit of Brexit bluster and bluff

Editorial: Sooner or later it will dawn on Boris Johnson that he cannot take the UK out of the EU without a deal or without parliamentary approval. He could, however, do so with a second referendum

Taking Boris Johnson at his word – always a bit of a gamble – there will be no general election, at least before Brexit, and certainly not one that he himself initiates. Just for a change, there are good reasons to believe him on this, if few other affairs of state.

Recall the rather contrived acronym retrospectively devised for his leadership campaign – Dude. It was short for Deliver Brexit, Unite the country, Defeat Jeremy Corbyn, Energise. It seems obvious that any election campaign launched before Mr Johnson has actually delivered Brexit would not “defeat Jeremy Corbyn”. It would, rather, suffer from the glaring fact that he hadn’t actually delivered on Brexit.

Like his ill-starred predecessor, Mr Johnson has one job to do – getting the UK out of the EU – and he cannot afford to go to the country before he has achieved it. Whether that happens on 31 October or not is secondary. The voters would not take much of a different view if the Brexit legislation was signed off on, say, 5 November, another symbolic date. The important point is whether Mr Johnson has done what he has based his entire political career on doing. If not, he risks humiliation at the polls, and a record short premiership.

Brexit, until and unless it is either achieved or abandoned, stands as the most potent threat to the future of the Conservative Party in decades, if not generations. On the one side it is having its support cannibalised by the Brexit Party. The Farage-ists are simultaneously infiltrating and destabilising the Conservative Party and threatening to stand in all 650 seats in the UK, even against their Eurosceptic allies and, apparently, the DUP.

On the other side, the Liberal Democrats are also tearing a lump out of the Tories’ more pro-EU wing, with talk of defections. The lesson of the Peterborough and Brecon by-elections seems to be that the Conservatives and the Brexit Party are competing for the same vote, and splitting it. Meanwhile, the Remain forces are getting better at putting up a united front, even without the Labour Party.

Even though Mr Johnson may be well ahead of Jeremy Corbyn, in such a four- or five-party system (if we include Greens, Plaid and the SNP) and with a complex web of pro- and anti-Brexit alliances to be forged, it is impossible to call a pre-Brexit general election. It would, in any case, be virtually impossible for either main party to win an overall majority, let alone a healthy one. After Brexit, if it happens, the Brexit Party and the Liberal Democrat challenge would fade away.

It is reported that Dominic Cummings wants to defy parliament, the palace and constitutional order and convention by threatening an election campaign which allows the Brexit due date of 31 October to fall during a period when parliament will be dissolved. The thinking goes that a vote of confidence lost by the government would indeed mean a general election – but only after a fortnight of horse-trading. If a new government cannot be formed, then Mr Johnson can call a poll at his leisure, allowing Brexit to simply happen in the meantime, as is called for under the legal fallback of the Article 50 and withdrawal agreement legislation.

The suspicion must be that it is more of the same old bluff. The government’s negotiating tactic is to talk as tough as possible, act as hard as possible and spend as much money as is needed to induce the EU to capitulate and agree to the UK’s illogical cake-and-eat-it terms. Hence all the inspired leaks about ministerial briefings and the “war cabinet” and emergency measures and the public propaganda campaign.

The putative notion of a “people vs politicians” election is credible. It is also quite possible that Mr Cummings is working his magic on Facebook. They look like they mean business – Brexit will happen on 31 October “do or die”, “whatever the circumstances”, “come what may”.

It’s a plausible enough story – except for one vital problem: everyone knows it is a gigantic, elaborate, expensive bluff. Mr Johnson himself once slipped and called no deal a “million to one chance”. Everyone knows that parliament can and will stop a no-deal Brexit. There is a majority against it in parliament and, sooner or later, that judgement will be given legal effect, including by Conservative MPs who feel they have nothing else to lose.

It is true that the last Commons vote held to stop no deal failed to do so – but that was in the middle of the Tory leadership campaign. It would have been very bad manners for Tories to spoil their own fun.

In the autumn, ways will be found. The EU will not budge: there is no mandate to do so. Sooner or later it will dawn on Mr Johnson that he cannot take the UK out of the EU without a deal, or without parliamentary approval. He could, however, do so with a second referendum, were he and Mr Cummings as enthusiastic about a new vote as they were about the one in 2016. It is, ironically, their only chance of delivering Brexit. After that, the dudes can have their general election.