Report: Remain Alliance Plots to Force Brexit Delay as Early as This Week

The Remain Alliance of anti-Brexit MPs will meet with Jeremy Corbyn on Monday to plot forcing Prime Minister Boris Johnson to ask the EU for another Brexit delay as early as this weekend.

The Benn Act would stop a no-deal Brexit on Halloween and force the prime minister to ask for a further extension of Article 50 — the legal mechanism for leaving the EU — by October 19th, but die-hard Remainers fear that they will not have enough time to launch a court challenge to stop Mr Johnson from taking the UK out of the EU in a clean break.

A number of figures on both sides of the aisle have said that there could be legal loopholes the Brexit-backing government could exploit to fullfil Mr Johnson’s pledge to deliver Brexit by October 31st, with or without a deal.

The Labour leader is set to meet with fellow Opposition MPs, including leader of the Liberal Democrat party Jo Swinson and Ian Blackford, the Westminster leader of the leftist, pro-EU Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP), as well as representatives from the Independent Group for Change, the Greens, and leftist Welsh nationalist Plaid Cymru.

The cross-party group of Remainers are set to try to bring about a new law to force an earlier deadline this coming month, with The Telegraph reporting the Liberal Democrats, who at their conference came out officially to back cancelling Brexit entirely, want the deadline to be by October 5th.

The Lib Dem plan is backed by the SNP, while a Labour source told the newspaper: “We are looking at every mechanism and additional legal safeguard against no deal.”

While Remainers have had over three years to scrutinise the government’s Brexit planning, prominent pro-EU campaigners inside and outside of parliament brought the issue of Johnson suspending parliament to court, over the loss of extra days to find new ways to stop Brexit, with the Supreme Court ruling last week prorogation was “unlawful”. resulting in the Remain-backing Speaker of the House of Commons recalling parliament the next day.

The main antagonists in the Remain Alliance — Labour and the Liberal Democrats — had already had their conferences during prorogation; however, the Europhile-packed Commons voted that there could not be a short break this week for the Conservatives to hold their own conference. The newspaper reports that the Remainers hope to exploit Tories’ absence in the House this week to take over parliamentary business and table a one-line bill as an amendment to the Benn Act.

A separate plot is afoot where another group of Rebel Remainers are seeking to pass a law allowing Speaker Bercow to bypass the prime minister and ask the EU directly for an extension, after Mr Johnson repeatedly refused to do so himself, and allow the speaker to appoint a new British commissioner to the EU, according to The Mail on Sunday.

Members of the rebel group include former Tories Oliver Letwin, ex-Attorney General Dominic Grieve, and former Chancellor Philip Hammond. A senior Commons source told the newspaper: “The rebels say that, if Boris wants to play with nuclear weapons, then so will they.”

The report comes as Number 10 is investigating the Europhile MPs responsible for the Benn Act, over claims Letwin and others had received help drafting the Bill from members of the French government of Emmanuel Macron and the EU, with a Downing Street source telling The Mail on Sunday: “The Government is working on extensive investigations into Dominic Grieve, Oliver Letwin, and Hilary Benn [who tabled the Bill] and their involvement with foreign powers and the funding of their activities.”