Boris Johnson suffers another defeat after MPs strike down bid for an early election

(Image credit: Toby Melville/Reuters)

last updated 28 October 2019

U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson is in the loss column again.

On the same day Johnson begrudgingly accepted the European Union's offer of extending the Brexit deadline until Jan. 31, 2020, MPs voted down the prime minister's bid to hold early general elections. While Johnson publicly said nobody "relishes" the idea of a general election, The Washington Post notes he "very much" wants one since it could lead to him reclaiming a parliamentary majority and, eventually in his eyes, free the U.K. from its Brexit quagmire once and for all.

He had no such luck Monday, with MPs voting for the motion 299 to 70. That fell short of the required two-thirds majority with the Labour Party continuing to abstain while the possibility of a no-deal Brexit remains in play. However, both Johnson and Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn have hinted they could back an early election scheduled for December under a new plan proposed by the Liberal Democrats and the Scottish Nationalist Party that would only require a simple majority of votes.

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Tim is a staff writer at The Week and has contributed to Bedford and Bowery and The New York Transatlantic. He is a graduate of Occidental College and NYU's journalism school. Tim enjoys writing about baseball, Europe, and extinct megafauna. He lives in New York City.

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