Boris Johnson has promised that Britain will leave the EU on October 31 “do or die.” However, if he is elected prime minister, could parliament stop him? Like everything else Brexit related, the answer is complicated.

One stubborn problem that remains is the Irish backstop. “I think the problem is very fundamental. It [the backstop] has been devised by this country as an instrument of our own incarceration in the single market and customs union. It needs to come out,” Johnson said.


The former attorney general, Dominic Grieve, said that Johnson is “playing to the tune of a growing extremism” on the backstop issue. Grieve previously proposed an amendment which could block no-deal, though he has since admitted that the efforts to stop Johnson may not work.

Where is Brussels on all this? Bloomberg reports that the EU is “weighing up possible concessions it could offer the U.K. to avoid a chaotic no-deal Brexit.”