That could then lead to a new general election, in which British voters would have the chance to let Johnson keep the job or to replace him. But none of these setbacks for Johnson have solved a defining problem of British politics:

There isn’t majority support — in Parliament or in the country — for any single solution to the Brexit mess.

Ever since Britain voted in 2016 to leave the European Union — by 52 percent to 48 percent — the country has been paralyzed by a lack of clarity about what should come next. Most of Parliament and most of the country oppose the hard, no-deal Brexit that Johnson is willing to accept. Most also oppose each specific soft Brexit plan, like the one negotiated by the previous prime minister, Theresa May. And while some polls show that most Britons now regret Brexit itself, the 2016 vote remains more meaningful than any poll since.

So what happens now? I’m rooting first for Parliament to block a hard Brexit and then for the biggest Britain-wide party that clearly opposes Brexit — the relatively centrist Liberal Democrats — to do shockingly well in the upcoming general election. That would send a message that, upon reflection, the British people have decided that the Brexit advocates made their case based on fantasies and lies.

But my preferred outcome remains a long shot. The ultimate question is instead likely to be whether Johnson’s critics in his own party and the Labour Party can ever rally around an alternative. If they can’t, they may help Johnson do well in an upcoming election and then he’d be able to insist on his preferred outcome.

Elsewhere

In The Guardian, Tom Kibasi explains that Johnson is appealing to the “radicalized” voters who would otherwise support the niche Brexit Party: “The risk for Johnson is that he has already alienated moderate Conservative voters. … The turn to the hard right by Johnson’s Conservative party makes Labour’s shift to the left under [Jeremy] Corbyn appear genteel by comparison.”