LONDON (AP) – An anti-Brexit activist who won a major legal case against the British government said Sunday she will go to court again if the next prime minister tries to take the UK out of the European Union without a deal.
Businesswoman Gina Miller said she instructed her lawyers to serve notice to Conservative Party lawmaker Boris Johnson in anticipation of him becoming the next prime minister.
Johnson is the favourite to succeed Theresa May as prime minister later this month. He says it is imperative Britain leaves the EU on the rescheduled date of October 31st. He has refused to rule out suspending Parliament if lawmakers tried to block Brexit.
Opponents say that would be undemocratic.
Miller said “it would be an abuse of his powers to close Parliament … to limit the voice of the representatives that we all elect.”
In 2017, Miller won a ruling in the Supreme Court that stopped the government from triggering the countdown to Brexit without a vote in Parliament.
Britain’s departure from the EU was postponed twice because Parliament refused to back the divorce deal the government struck with the bloc.
But Johnson and his rival to become Conservative Party leader and prime minister, Jeremy Hunt, both argue that failing to go through with Brexit, deal or no deal, would betray voters’ 2016 decision to leave the EU — and devastate the governing Conservatives.
Conservative lawmaker Priti Patel, who supports Johnson, said “frankly the British public are sick to death of this.”
“They want to see a government now, with renewed conviction, get out there and do exactly what it said it will do, which is now to deliver Brexit,” she told Sky News.
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