Can the Queen sack Prime Minister Boris Johnson?

Boris Johnson is prepared to “squat” in Downing Street and “dare” the Queen to sack him if MPs try to unseat him in order to avoid a no-deal Brexit, according to government sources.

The row centres around the prime minister’s repeatedly stated intention of leaving the European Union with or without a deal on 31 October. If Brussels rejects his proposals for the Irish border, new legislation known as the Benn Act requires Johnson to ask for a three-month Article 50 extension by 19 October.

However, several government sources have told The Daily Telegraph that the PM “is willing to go to the Supreme Court in an effort to avoid having to write a letter asking for a delay”.

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And senior Tory insiders have told The Times that Johnson would sit tight even if he were found in contempt of court, unless he were facing jail, in an attempt to drive through Brexit on time.

One senior figure said: “Unless the police turn up at the doors of 10 Downing Street with a warrant for the prime minister’s arrest, he won’t be leaving.”

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Meanwhile, the opposition would be likely to call a vote of no confidence and try to form an alternative cross-party government.

But The Times says Johnson could also “refuse to resign or recommend the name of any successor to the Queen”.

Dominic Grieve - one of 21 Tory MPs whose whips were removed for backing the bid to block no-deal - said last week that the monarch would be forced to dismiss Johnson.

So can the Queen sack a PM?

“Yes, she can,” says Fleet Street Fox at the Daily Mirror - although the columnist notes that the “monarch’s powers of hiring and firing aren’t used often”. The last time was in 1834, when King William IV dismissed Lord Melbourne’s Whig government.

If the Government loses a no-confidence vote and an alternative government has the support of the House of Commons, “convention suggests that the PM should stand down”, says the BBC.

“Yet there is nothing clearly stated in law that says the prime minister must do so. Failing to step down would risk bringing the Queen into the Brexit dispute, as the monarch appoints PMs and, in theory, can dismiss one who behaves unconstitutionally,” the broadcaster adds.

Writing in the Financial Times, lawyer and journalist David Allen Green says a sacking by the Queen after the initial no-confidence vote is “possible in constitutional theory and not inconceivable in the strange politics of the moment”.

However, he continues, rather than firing the PM directly, the Queen is more likely to ask another political leader to see whether a new administration can be formed that could win the confidence of Parliament.

“The removal from office of the prime minister is implicit,” says Green. “This would not be an exercise of arbitrary power by the Crown: the scope and exercise of the power to appoint and dismiss prime ministers is determined entirely by what would be acceptable to the elected representatives in Parliament.”