Britain has a new Prime Minister and he’s vowing to pull the country out of the European Union by the end of October.
Boris Johnson, a hardline Brexit supporter, is succeeding outgoing British Prime Minister Theresa May, inheriting a government that has been on the brink of collapse several times this year as Brexit negotiations with the European Union have faltered.
After a six-week leadership race, which he led from the start, Johnson defeated his main rival, Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt, in a ballot of the Conservative Party’s 180,000 members. The result marks the end of a battle for the biggest job in British politics and the start of what threatens to be a brutal new phase in the civil war inside the government over Brexit.
Prime Minister Johnson has only 100 days to negotiate a new divorce deal with the European Union before the United Kingdom is due to leave the trading bloc at the end of October. He must do so despite opposition from the European Union and a growing rebellion from his own colleagues, including a group of ministers who have vowed to quit their posts rather than work for him.
Several members of his own Conservative government are threatening to fight plans to leave the European Union with or without a deal by the October 31 deadline. Adding to his problems is the Tories’ lack of an automatic majority in Parliament -- and the Democratic Unionist Party, the small Northern Irish political party that props up the Conservatives, wants to renegotiate the terms of its continuing support.
Despite all the headaches, Johnson has declared the previous terms of a Brexit agreement negotiated this past May to be "dead" and has vowed to secure better divorce terms by the October 31 deadline for Britain to leave the European economic zone.
