An election is not the right way to decide the Leave and Remain question – we need a Final Say

There is no definitive record of the number of times Boris Johnson promised that he would take the United Kingdom out of the European Union by Halloween, but it is indisputably a substantial volume.

Indeed, the rhetorical flourishes have passed with ease into the contemporary political argot: “Do or die”; “die in a ditch”; “come what may”; “no ifs or buts”. He did everything except have it tattooed on his forehead. We assume.

Mr Johnson has failed. He can blame parliament, the courts, the BBC, or Uncle Tom Cobley, but a failure on his own terms it remains. Britain will not leave the EU this Thursday. The £100m public information campaign to that effect was a grievous waste of taxpayers’ money. Rather than ending uncertainty among business and citizens, it exacerbated it.

It may be fairly chalked up as another of the prime minister’s many broken promises. In the end, all his knavish tricks, the bluster and the bluffs did not work. Shortly he will be obliged to nominate a UK Commissioner to the EU, and the EU had also stated that he will not be allowed to disrupt the workings of the EU out of childish spite.

So much for taking back control. So much for dying in a ditch.

Yet, as so often in his sometimes charmed past, he seems to be being rewarded for his failure by weaponising it to secure a December general election. Mr Johnson spies his 12-point lead over Labour in the opinion polls and wants to take advantage of it. If polling day comes before the Withdrawal Agreement Bill is passed by parliament, then he can mobilise his strategy of launching a “people vs parliament” election – a vote to implement the 2016 referendum result against the opposition of a “zombie parliament” and the perfidious “Establishment”.

It would also be his own personal mandate, as well as endorsement for the Tory manifesto. Ideally, for reasons of personal rivalry, he might try for a bigger overall majority of MPs than the dozen Mr Cameron managed in 2015. It is not a fantastical thought that Mr Johnson could do even better, in such an unpredictable, confused and fragmented political scene.

If the poll arrives after he has “got Brexit done” it would be even easier for the government to outflank the Brexit Party and the Liberal Democrats. Once Brexit is settled then much of their respective Leave and Remain appeal will simply evaporate. But an early election is what Mr Johnson wants, either way.

Of course the irony is that if Mr Johnson had not “paused” the bill after its timetable was rejected by MPs and instead offered a little more time for parliament to digest the legislation, he might be well on his way to delivering Brexit by now. Another failure, right there, to add to the ledger.

A December election will be a miserably cold and damp affair to campaign in, and many voters will not thank Mr Johnson for it. Some will not bother to vote, and rather go to the supermarket, the office party or nativity play. Yet resolution of Brexit, or rather the first phase of it, is something that a weary British population and an increasingly impatient EU might also look forward to, such is the current frustration.

Even so, there are risks – substantial ones, and for all sides. While Mr Johnson believes he can beat Mr Corbyn, the Labour leader has proved himself a doughty campaigner in the past, albeit against a pitiful campaign run by Theresa May.

More potently, the issues that determine general elections are not necessarily the ones the governing party chooses, and the voters are in a febrile mood. Old loyalties have dissolved. Mr Johnson will thus also see votes switch to Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party, to the Liberal Democrats and the Greens and nationalists. Post-Ruth Davidson, the SNP could easily wipe the Tories out in Scotland. Similarly, Labour could also lose votes to the Liberal Democrats and Welsh and Scottish nationalists and to Mr Farage, just as Mr Johnson would – all with unpredictable results in Labour-Conservative marginals and some “safe” seats.

Differences in turnout among the elderly and students in particular, and a historically large contingent of incumbent rebel and independent MPs standing again will further complicate matters in a first-past-the-post system. Labour could do relatively well in Commons seats for a poor number of votes; and the Tories have few potential allies in a hung parliament. Labour could come a poor second in votes, yet still form a minority administration.

Who then could claim a mandate from the British people? And, regarding Brexit, for what outcome?

More than anything, a general election, by its nature, cannot answer the Brexit question. It is the wrong answer to a choice between Leave and Remain. It will settle nothing in the sense of ending the national trauma and moving towards closure and healing. If it returns another hung parliament, as in 2010 and 2017, then it will be another “zombie” affair.

In any case, in principle an election is an inferior and less legitimate method of determining Brexit, as compared with a Final Say referendum. Brexit is not over.