Brexit on hold as December general election backed

That’s it for this evening. Read the full story here.

With the election locked in, the main parties are kicking off their election campaigns.

Boris Johnson received a rapturous reception as he arrived at a meeting of the Conservative Party’s 1922 Committee after his bid for an early general election cleared the Commons, according to PA news agency. MPs cheered and banged the table as he arrived for the meeting in Parliament.

Meanwhile on Twitter, the Labour Party called the election “a once-in-a-generation chance to rebuild and transform our country.”

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn reacted by posting a campaign video:

Liberal Democrats leader Jo Swinson said the election will “decide the future of our country for generations. It is our best chance to elect a government to stop Brexit.”

She added:

The British Parliament will be dissolved next Wednesday, the leader of the House of Commons, Jacob Rees-Mogg said told the house this evening.

The December 12 poll – backed this evening by MPs – will be the third time in four years that the country will hold a general election.

In fact, British voters have had their say in some sort of election every single year for the past five years:

A vote on Thursday, December 12 means the UK will get election results on Friday, December 13.

Lawmakers in the House of Commons have voted to hold a snap poll on Thursday, 12 December in an attempt to break the political impasse over Brexit.

It must now go to the House of Lords to be signed off.

Lawmakers in the House of Commons are now voting on the main motion of holding a snap election on December 12.

Results are expected in about 15 minutes.

Lawmakers rejected the Labour Party’s amendment to move the date to Monday, December 9.

It was defeated by 315 votes to 295.

The government favors December 12.

… here’s a picture from the 1923 poll, the last time a UK general election happened in December.

Labour Party candidate Henry Gosling supervises a poster campaign during the election.

MPs are voting on an amendment to the Early Parliamentary General Election Bill which would move the proposed date from the government-favoured December 12 to the opposition’s suggestion of December 9.

Results expected in about 15 minutes.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson tweeted just before the key parliamentary vote on an early general election.

He has accused Parliament and the Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn of “blocking everything” and said the country needs a new Parliament to move on.

We’re not far away now from finding out the date for the snap UK poll. And it’s been a long time (1923, to be exact) since the UK held an election in the month of December

Most lawmakers agree the date isn’t great. Worries voiced in Parliament this evening include the risk of bad weather, the timing possibly coinciding with school nativity plays, university students breaking for the end of semester and people simply being too busy in the run-up to the holiday season.

Conservative MP Nigel Evans said the election date was not ideal, but that the vote was necessary:

The list of lawmakers who’ve had the Conservative Party whip restored doesn’t include some high-profile names. Of the 21 MPs, only 10 have been invited back in.

The rest are, according to PA news agency, still suspended. They include former Chancellor Philip Hammond, the longest serving MP Ken Clarke and former Tory leadership candidate Rory Stewart.

One of the 11, Sam Gyimah, defected to the Liberal Democrats.

Ten Conservative Party rebels who were kicked out of the party for voting against Boris Johnson’s government last month have been allowed back in, according to the PA news agency.

The Prime Minister had removed the party whip from 21 MPs in early September (including some big names) for voting against a no-deal Brexit.

PA reported that the following MPs had the whip restored tonight:

Caroline Lucas, who represents the Green Party in the House of Commons, says she won’t vote for the early election because the next poll must focus on broader issues.

Instead of a general election, Lucas wants another Brexit referendum in which voters decide between remaining in the bloc and the deal struck by the government with the EU.

She says that the next election should be focused on climate change.

**Election nerd alert**

Chris Hanretty, a professor of politics at Royal Holloway, University of London, has looked into the issue of the student vote in a series of tweets.

Based on assumptions about the number of students in the UK and their voting habits, he says that if 10% of students who would normally vote decide to skip the election because of vacation, there would be between 144,200 and 188,500 fewer votes in total.

He goes on to explore the nitty gritty details of what that would mean for different parties (hint: Labour and Lib Dems would lose the most).

Read the whole thread here:

Lawmakers in the House of Commons are now discussing when to hold the early vote.

Opposition Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn and Liberal Democrats’ leader Jo Swinson have proposed an amendment that would specify Monday, December 9 as the date. The government wants Thursday, December 12.

Three days may not seem like much, but the Liberal Democrats and Labour are worried that the later date could prevent some students from voting.

They argue many might be travelling home for vacation because the date coincides with the end of semester at many UK universities.

The early election bill has passed its second reading in Parliament, clearing the first stage of the process in the House of Commons. It passed without a formal vote with Speaker of the House John Bercow instead asking MPs to express their opinion verbally. The response was an overwhelming “aye.”

The bill has now moved to the so-called committee stage, during which MPs will vote on the amendments that have been selected.

It’s worth noting, Bercow has stepped aside as this stage is usually chaired by the Deputy Speaker, Lindsay Hoyle.

The chances of an early election being scuppered have faded. The Deputy Speaker, Lindsay Hoyle, chairman of the Commons Ways and Means Committee, has ruled two problematic amendments out of scope.

The government had said it would pull the bill if lawmakers voted in favor of giving the vote to 16- and 17-year-olds, and to EU citizens living in the UK. But those measures are now off the table.

The only choice facing lawmakers is the date.

Boris Johnson wants the election to happen on December 12; opposition Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn has proposed an amendment that would specify December 9 as the date, and another Labour MP, Ian Murray, has thrown in a wildcard of May 2020.

Labour MP Jess Phillips?is speaking now. Phillips?is known for passionate speeches and today is no exception.

She is pleading for Parliament to try to find a consensus, instead of forcing people to vote in yet another election that may “end up in a hung parliament.”

Phillips referred to an incident in her constituency a few weeks ago, in which a man was arrested and charged after calling her a “fascist” and trying to “break into” her?office:

Prime Minister Boris Johnson will cancel his plans to hold an early election if the right to vote is extended to more people, a Downing Street spokesperson told CNN.

The spokesperson said that if Parliament decides in favor of lowering the voting age to 16 or to allow European Union citizens to vote, it would delay the election by six months.

Opposition parties are pushing for voting rights to be broadened. The current voting age for general elections in the UK is 18 years old.?

The European Council has officially authorized the decision to grant the UK another Brexit extension. This formal step also came with a warning from the Council President Donald Tusk.

“The EU27 has formally adopted the extension. It may be the last one. Please make the best use of this time,” he said.

This may be an important debate, but most of the MPs are not listening to it in the debating chamber.

MPs are of course free to come and go as they wish, they don’t need to be in the chamber all the time. Most will no doubt come back for the vote, which should happen at around 6:30 p.m. local time (2:30 p.m. ET).

The debate is dragging on, and many MPs are taking a break.

Conservative MP Bob Seely said that Parliament needs to vote for the election in order to move on and focus on other issues besides Brexit.

“We need a new Parliament, because we simply spend too much time talking about the same old thing, talking about Brexit endlessly and there is so much else out there,” he said.

“There are so many other things that we need to debate, I am very interested to debate the rise of autocracies in the world, we have very significant issues regarding Huawei.”

“This Parliament is really reaching new levels of absurdity,” he said.

Liberal Democrats leader Jo Swinson says her party will do “everything we can” to stop the United Kingdom leaving the European Union.

Swinson said:

She said that if the Lib Dems win the election with a majority, the party will revoke Article 50, the legal step that set off the whole Brexit process.

The SNP is also talking about extending the vote to 16- and 17-year-olds.

Ian Blackford,?the SNP’s leader at Westminster, pointed to Scotland’s 2014 independence referendum.

He said that when Scotland decided to give younger people the right to vote in that vote, it did so because it was their future that was at stake. That is also the case in the upcoming election, he said.

Blackford is no doubt advocating for young people to be given the right to vote because he is hoping it will bring more votes for SNP. But there was some frustration among people too young to vote in the Brexit referendum and he is now tapping into these grievances.

Labour and Liberal Democrats are also supporting the move, for similar reasons. Their electorate is traditionally younger, so lowering the voting age could bring them more votes.

Scottish Labour MP Paul Sweeney tweeted:

Jeremy Corbyn said he would support amendments to the election bill calling for votes for 16-year-olds and EU nationals with settled status.

Corbyn noted that some elections in Scotland and Wales already include those provisions, and said “it seems to me only logical” that they be added.

But if those amendments were to pass, it would be a huge blow to the government – enfranchising both of those blocs of voters would likely damage the Conservatives’ chances at an election.

It’s possible the government would pull the bill if faced with that prospect.

Boris Johnson is speaking in the House of Commons, opening the second reading debate on his bill calling for a general election.

It’s the fourth time he’s made a pitch for an election to MPs – but the first time he has a realistic chance of being successful.

And so, in a sense, this is Johnson’s first stump speech of the election period. He’s going in hard on the Labour frontbench and the party’s leader Jeremy Corbyn, calling them “communists” and likening Corbyn to Fidel Castro.

“There is only one way to restore the esteem in which our democracy is held and to recover the respect in which Parliament should be held … that is finally to offer ourselves to the judgement of the people of this country,” Johnson concludes.

An amendment has been approved by MPs to allow all lawmakers in the House of Commons to edit the general election bill.

The government had planned for only government ministers to amend the bill, but this result means now any MP can table any amendments they want – meaning issues such as votes for 16-year-olds could be tacked on.

Valerie Vaz, Labour’s shadow Leader of the House of Commons, has criticized the government’s program motion as “unacceptable.”

The motion sets out the government’s proposed timetable for pushing the election vote through the House of Commons. Vaz has attacked the government for designing it in a way that would frustrate Parliament, and limit amendments and scrutiny.

MPs are currently voting on an amendment by a Labour backbencher that would make it easier to amend the bill – thus giving some MPs the chance to add stipulations such as votes for 16 year olds.

It’s all very confusing, and it’s unclear whether Labour’s issues with the program motion will derail the day’s proceedings.

The debate on whether to hold an early election has just started. Well, sort of. The lawmakers are now debating whether to debate the early election motion.

It will be a long day, but we will get there eventually. The Speaker of the House John Bercow has urged the lawmakers to not waste time, so they have enough time to get to the vote today.

George Osborne may no longer be in politics, but he doesn’t stray too far from it.

The former Chancellor is now the Editor of the Evening Standard, London’s free newspaper with circulation of more than 800,000. He tweeted the paper’s Tuesday front page after Labour Party said it would support an early election.

The headline: Turkeys vote for Christmas.

(Osborne lost his job in government after the Brexit referendum, by the way.)

Now that all the parties have agreed to back an early election, it’s time to get into the nitty-gritty details of the process.

The date remains unclear. Prime Minister Boris Johnson proposed a December 12 vote, but the Liberal Democrats and the SNP are pushing for a slightly earlier date.

Their main argument is that most university students will be wrapping up their term at that time and then traveling home for the holidays. A Thursday election just before the break could be tricky for some of them – and they are more likely to vote for opposition parties.

Another question is whether the voting age should be lowered from 18 to 16.

Lib Dems and the SNP are arguing younger people should have a say in the election – both are banking on their support.

Labour is also likely to be in favor, as their leader Jeremy Corbyn is popular with younger voters.

However, the government said it had no plans to lower the country’s voting age, according to the Prime Minister’s spokesperson.

MPs may lay down amendments on these issues in Parliament today.

Labour's Jeremy Corbyn is popular with younger voters. This photo was taken during his speech at Glastonbury Festival in 2017.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn finally agreed to back a call for an early election on Tuesday, but not all of his party’s members are happy about it.

Some Labour MPs think a December election is a bad idea, because it comes right in the middle of the busy run-up to the holiday season. There’s also a worry that older people or those with disabilities might find it difficult getting to polling stations on a grim winter day.

Boris Johnson during the 2016 Brexit referendum campaign.

Photo calls. Stump speeches. Leaflets tumbling through letterboxes. Debates (and debates about the debates). Daily opinion polls showing the slightest nudge one way or the other.?

Whether it likes it or not, Britain is now in election season.

But while this poll will have all the hallmarks of campaigns past, it will not be a regular election.

For one, there’ll be a chill in the air. Spring elections are the norm in the UK, and its last poll took place in June. But this year, activists will be accosting Christmas shoppers, and nativity scenes will decorate polling stations in schools and churches across the country.

More pressingly, the temperature of the nation is dramatically different too. Brexit will dominate the campaign; and unlike in 2017, when both the Conservatives and Labour were arguing they would pursue Brexit, voters have a wide array of choices.

This year four parties are seeing reasonable results in the polls, and all have dramatically different approaches to resolving the UK’s biggest political crisis since the World War II.

The immediate future of the nation could therefore come down to a handful of mini-battles over the next six weeks, and whether one of those groups can pick up some real campaign momentum.

The results of the 2017 election are projected onto the BBC's New Broadcasting House in London.

Here’s a recap of where the four main groups stand:

Conservative Party: Boris Johnson will campaign on his Brexit deal, which he agreed with the EU earlier this month. It looks a lot like Theresa’s May pact, save for one crucial difference – Johnson has swapped out the backstop for a customs border in the Irish sea. He’ll need to persuade Brexit purists that he can be trusted after failing to deliver his “do or die,” “dead in a ditch” promise to take Britain out of the EU by October 31.

Labour Party: After much deliberating, Jeremy Corbyn backed a confirmatory referendum on Brexit earlier this year. His party’s plan is to negotiate a softer Brexit deal with the EU, and then to put it to a vote against the option of remaining. Corbyn says the process can be pulled off within six months of an election, and his is the only major party pushing for a second poll.

Liberal Democrats: After branding themselves as the anti-Brexit party, the Liberal Democrats have seen their membership and MP count surge in recent months. The group backs revoking Article 50 and scrapping Brexit altogether, the most hardline of all Remain options. They are traditionally the UK’s third party and winning a majority is essentially impossible, but the group could damage the Conservatives in seats that have typically voted Tory but are also heavy Remain-voting areas.

Brexit Party: Nigel Farage reprised his role as a pro-Brexit agitator when he set up the Brexit Party, which performed well in this year’s European election. He wants a no-deal Brexit, an outcome economists have warned against but the government briefly talked up before striking a deal with the EU. Farage will take on Johnson over his Brexit credentials, and the winner of that battle could dictate the election – if Farage picks up momentum, the Conservatives could be squeezed from both sides on the issue.

The British government has paused its “Get Ready For Brexit” ad campaign after its stated exit date from the European Union was delayed, the UK Cabinet Office confirmed to CNN on Tuesday.

The campaign told Brits to prepare for a UK departure on October 31 – an event that Prime Minister Boris Johnson said would take place, “no ifs, no buts.”

But on Monday, Johnson officially accepted the EU’s offer of an extension – moving the Brexit deadline to January 31.

According to the UK Government’s website, the campaign is designed to raise awareness on the necessary preparations for businesses and individuals in the event of a Brexit deal or a no-deal Brexit.

However, Downing Street told CNN on Tuesday that “preparations for a no-deal Brexit continue.”

In the House of Commons on Monday, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said: “The Prime Minister spent ￡100 million – ￡100 million – on an advertising campaign to leave on 31 October, but failed to deliver.”

“The National Audit Office says that the campaign ‘failed to resonate.’ I ask the Prime Minister, and I ask this House: with that ￡100 million, how many nurses could have been hired, how many parcels could have been funded at food banks, how many social care packages could have been funded for our elderly?”

Boris Johnson’s government will accept a proposal – if it’s tabled by opposition parties – for a general election to be held on December 11, a senior government adviser confirmed to CNN.

If the Scottish National Party or the Liberal Democrats table an amendment naming December 11 as the polling date, the government would accept that rather than sticking firm to the Prime Minister’s proposed December 12 date.

Johnson will put his election bill to the House of Commons later on Tuesday. Unlike the government’s failed attempt to get an election via the Fixed Term Parliaments Act on Monday, Tuesday’s push for election approval only needs a simple majority in the House.

The SNP and Liberal Democrats told CNN they are not able to confirm any amendments they will table yet.

The Labour Party will back a snap general election later tonight, essentially confirming that Brits will head to the polls before Christmas.

Here’s Jeremy Corbyn’s statement to the shadow cabinet this morning:

There are still some details to be ironed out on the date – the government wants December 12 while opposition parties are leaning towards December 11.

But we can now be almost sure that an election will happen this year.

A polling station in Dulwich on the day of the UK's last December election, in 1923.

There’s already been plenty of back and forth over the precise date of a December election. In case you’ve had something better to do than follow all of these minute disagreements, here’s a quick recap…

The government tried three times to get an election on December 12, and failed. Meanwhile, opposition parties Lib Dems and SNP introduced a plan for a December 9 election via a one-line bill, which they said they’d support and which Labour seems more welcoming towards. The government took that plan and introduced it themselves this morning, with one major difference: it set the date at December 12 again. Lib Dem MPs said that date was unacceptable – and now, the PA news agency reports that the Lib Dems will table an amendment to re-set the date to December 11, which the government has indicated it could support.

But why does all of this matter? There’s a few reasons:

Parliament will start sitting at 11:30 a.m. GMT (7:30 a.m. ET), ahead of what could be a lengthy day in the chamber.

There’ll be a statement and questions on health and social care for an hour, which means that the earliest the election debate can begin is 12:30 p.m.

Then what happens? That debate will be on a business or program motion, meaning it relates to the government’s attempt to put an early election to a vote, and the details of the proposed timetable. In other words, it’s a debate about whether there can be a debate.

If that program motion is approved, MPs then have six hours to progress the bill through all its various stages, meaning they’ll have their chance to go back and forth on it and lay down any amendments. This is happening so quickly because Parliament must be dissolved 25 working days before an election can take place, so the clock is ticking.

What are these stages? The first reading of the bill takes a few seconds – quite literally, it’s when the bill is read out loud for the first time.

The second reading is where MPs get to debate the bill for the first time, and Committee stage is where a forensic examination of the contents take place and amendments can be put down. At the report stage, the whole House then gets an opportunity to amend the bill – before a final debate in its Third Reading.

Amendments can delay proceedings, so much will depend on whether the opposition parties attempt to carve up the election bill by changing details of the date, franchising and other matters.

This whole process often takes weeks, but it needs to be fast-tracked if there is to be an election before Christmas. And don’t forget – after all of these are completed, the bill still has to pass through the House of Lords.

It all means we should find out sometime this evening whether Britain is heading for an election, and the process should be finalized in a day or two.

One group of MPs that Boris Johnson may need to persuade to get behind an election is the swathe of Conservatives he expelled from the party last month.

But he won’t have much luck with Philip Hammond, Theresa May’s former Chancellor, who has been an outspoken critic of Johnson’s government and now opposes an election.

“I think the Government is trying to create a narrative that Parliament is blocking Brexit and therefore we need an election. But, that is simply untrue.”

Hammond noted that the government is stopping its attempts to force its Brexit deal through Parliament, despite a majority for it looking possible. “It is the Government that has blocked it. And the Government should now stop blocking Brexit, allow Parliament to get on with the Brexit Bill and deliver Brexit by the end of November,” he said.

And he hit out at attempts to lurch the Conservative Party to the right, saying those inside the party “want this general election to change the shape of the Conservative Party in Parliament … to get rid of a cohort of MPs that it regards as not robust enough on this issue and to replace them with hardliners.”

Hammond found himself on the receiving end of the trend, when Johnson booted him from the party on September 3 after he helped prevent a no-deal Brexit.

“It really doesn’t matter how many times my party kicks me, abuses me, reviles me, they are not going to stop me feeling like a Conservative,” he said.

Good morning from London, where Boris Johnson seems to be slowly, painfully, inching towards a December snap election.

It may seem like a distant prospect after the Prime Minister lost a third vote on the issue just a few hours ago on Monday.

But Johnson will now make another roll of the dice as he tries to force a poll that could snap Britain out of its paralyzing political impasse.

Later today he’ll table a simple bill calling for a vote, which will need the support of only a majority of lawmakers. He seems to have won over two crucial opposition groups, meaning it looks likely – though not certain – that the UK will get its first December election since 1923.

But, as with all things Brexit, there may be at least one sting in the tail. The government will have to wrangle over the date and could face amendments from opposition MPs, all while trying to rush the bill through this week.

Still, by the end of today, we may find ourselves at the start of an election campaign – and a new episode in the endless soap opera of British politics.