Watching the struggle over Brexit in Britain has been akin to watching a football game between immovable sides. Every effort by either team to move down the field has failed, so players have resorted to sneaky trick plays. That’s what Boris Johnson’s latest ploy amounts to.

The new prime minister’s move is quite complex in terms of Britain’s tradition-riddled parliamentary system, involving the queen and something called “proroguing.” But it’s quite simple in intent. Basically, Mr. Johnson and his controversial political strategist, Dominic Cummings, have tried a surprise parliamentary end-run to curtail the amount of time Parliament will have to debate before the deadline for leaving the European Union without a deal on Oct. 31.

There have been many futile parliamentary maneuvers since the British voted in a fateful referendum in June 2016 to quit the Union. But this is the first one since Mr. Johnson wrested the prime ministry from Theresa May a little over a month ago, vowing to exit the Union with or without a deal.

And while Brexit deadlines, like the proverbial goal posts, have been moved before, that was under a prime minister seeking to reach a workable deal, not under one who has maneuvered his way to 10 Downing Street by claiming that all the doomsday scenarios around a no-deal Brexit are wrong.