Boris Johnson has announced that he will ask parliament to support plans for a snap October general election after suffering a humiliating defeat in his first House of Commons vote as prime minister.
Former cabinet ministers including Philip Hammond and David Gauke were among 21 Conservative rebels who banded together with opposition MPs to seize control of the parliamentary timetable on a dramatic day in Westminster.
The move was aimed at paving the way for a bill tabled by the Labour backbencher Hilary Benn, which is designed to block a no-deal Brexit by forcing the prime minister to request an extension to article 50 if he cannot strike a reworked deal with the EU27.
The PM had earlier described the legislation, drawn up by a cross-party coalition including the senior Tories Oliver Letwin and Dominic Grieve, as “Jeremy Corbyn’s surrender bill”.
After his defeat, Johnson said he would never request the delay mandated in the rebels’ bill, which he said would “hand control of the negotiations to the EU”.
If MPs passed the bill on Wednesday, he said, “the people of this country will have to choose” in an election that he would seek to schedule for 15 October.
The prime minister will need a two-thirds majority to secure a general election under the Fixed-term Parliaments Act, and Jeremy Corbyn quickly made clear his party would not vote for the motion unless and until the anti no-deal bill had passed. [...]
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