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The Johnson move will either force a two-tier Europe: a common market for all but political integration only for those who want it, or it will advance some sort of quasi-Anglospheric cooperation, led by the United States

He has been as deft as Mrs. May was inept. He said that he would try to negotiate an acceptable (by Parliament) arrangement with Brussels, but left no doubt that without it, Britain would leave with no deal. He assured Parliament that no European in Britain under existing arrangements need fear for their right to stay in Britain. The bogus Irish border question that Brussels had raised to be obstreperous, with the connivance of the Irish government, he dismissed, saying that Ireland’s approach to immigration was identical to that of the U.K. and that as he had no intention of imposing tariffs on the European Union, there was no need for the hard border between Northern and southern Ireland that had become a very vexed issue.

Parliament recessed in late July to return Sept. 3. It was assumed that the government would try to hold through September and October, with the remainers relying on Johnson’s ability to use the threat to leave without any agreement to push Brussels into more concessions, and the leavers tenuously believing that Johnson could be taken at his word to leave if he did not achieve serious concessions. This kept the political scene relatively quiet through high summer.

Photo by DANIEL LEAL-OLIVAS/AFP/Getty Images

On Wednesday, Johnson sprang his great surprise: he obtained from Her Majesty the Queen, in the most extraordinary constitutional development in her 67 years on the throne (the longest reign in British history going back to William the Conqueror in 1066), the prorogation of Parliament until mid-October, when the government will present a comprehensive program of reform. If there is a no-confidence vote then, or even a vote to require a request for yet another extension from Brussels, Johnson will return to the country, presumably in alliance with Nigel Farage’s pioneering Brexit Party, and will likely be re-elected, but it will be too late to stop the departure of Britain from Europe.