Dominic Cummings goes on the attack as no-deal Brexit looms

Boris Johnson’s most senior adviser, Dominic Cummings, has issued a challenge to Remainer MPs trying to stop a no-deal Brexit, warning that they do not get to “choose which votes they respect”.

The statement to Sky News - his first public remarks since his appointment last month - is the clearest synopsis of the argument put forward by Johnson, Cummings and those who believe the time has come to embrace exiting the EU without a withdrawal agreement rather than equivocating further on the issue.

The issue has split the Conservative Party, and has, in fact, usurped Leave vs. Remain to become UK politics’ highest-profile conflict, as the prime minister’s “no ifs, no buts” Halloween deadline approaches.

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Johnson is expected to face a no-confidence vote when parliament returns from recess in early September, a prospect that has raised the question of what would happen in the event he loses - a very real possibility given the conservatives’ internal polarisation at the same time as they hold a parliamentary majority of one.

However, The Daily Telegraph reports that “Cummings has… said that the prime minister could simply ignore” the result of a no-confidence vote, and “has told colleagues that he believes... Remainers have missed their opportunity to stop no-deal.”

“Under Parliamentary convention, a prime minister would normally resign if they lost the confidence of the House of Commons. But Johnson is said to be considering plans to stay on in Number 10 and delay calling a general election until after 31 October, by which time the UK will have left the European Union,” the paper says.

In response, opponents of no deal are raising the stakes. Dominic Grieve QC suggested on Tuesday that constitutionally, if the prime minister did resist an alternative government being formed in the wake of a no-confidence vote defeat, the Queen would be obliged simply to sack him.

“The constitutional principles are absolutely clear,” Mr Grieve, the former attorney general, told the The Times. “If the Commons is indicating that an alternative government exists which would enjoy its confidence, this can't be ignored.”

“The Queen is not a decorative extra. It's true she has sought to keep herself well away from the cut and thrust of politics but at the end of the day there are residual powers and responsibilities which lie with her. She might have to dispense with his services herself.”

“Grieve will see what he's right about,” Cummings said.

“The problem with all of the above is that the law on which it relies, the Fixed Term Parliaments Act, only came into being in 2011, meaning there is no precedent in using it to kick out a government,” CNN says. “The law itself doesn't specify exactly when [an] election would have to take place. This means that, despite losing a confidence vote, Johnson would effectively be able to sit in Downing Street for weeks, if not months.”

Given the EU’s adherence to their long-stated position that the withdrawal agreement, as it stands, is not open to further negotiation, some people are beginning to see no-deal as the only real possibility left on the table.

As Michael D’Arcy, the Irish minister in charge of financial services, told Reuters, “some people in the UK have convinced themselves that no deal is a good thing and that there are no circumstances that the European Union would allow the UK to crash out. The European Union has...moved the (Brexit) date on a number of occasions. I don’t see any more flexibility. The deal will be done after 31 October.”