(Bloomberg) --
The Speaker of the House of Commons has warned candidates vying to be the U.K.’s next prime minister that Parliament will not step aside and allow the country to tumble out of the European Union without a deal.
Several pro-Brexit contenders to succeed Theresa May have promised to force the country to exit the bloc without an agreement if necessary when the next negotiating deadline expires at the end of October. But John Bercow, the Commons speaker, said members of Parliament will not let this happen without their consent.
“The idea that Parliament is going to be evacuated from the center stage of debate on Brexit is unimaginable,” Bercow told an audience at the Brooking’s Institution in Washington D.C. on Tuesday. “The idea that the house won’t have its say is just for the birds. Parliament is a big player in this.”
Bercow intervened at a sensitive time as Britain’s ruling Conservative Party embarks on a two-month process to choose a new leader who will take over from May as prime minister. The next premier’s top priority will be to complete the Brexit divorce process.
But the Conservatives are split between hardliners such as Boris Johnson, who has suggested he wants a quick, clean break with the EU, and those like Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt, who warned that trying to leave without a deal would be political “suicide” that would lead to elections.
Bercow is a controversial figure in the U.K.’s political landscape who’s taken several key decisions during the parliamentary process that made May’s task harder as she tried and failed to get her Brexit deal approved. His comments suggest he’s preparing to enable MPs to give her successor an equally tough ride if he or she decides to pursue a no-deal Brexit.
Parliament has voted against leaving the EU without a deal on several occasions. But May’s divorce agreement has been rejected three times and now looks like it won’t come back. The EU meanwhile is refusing to reopen talks and says the existing withdrawal agreement is the only one on offer.
According to the U.K.’s Institute for Government, there is no clear way that Parliament can stop a prime minister who’s determined to crash the country out of the EU without an agreement. Bercow disagreed.
While it is currently the legal default that the U.K. will leave when the Oct. 31 deadline expires, the political reality is different, he said. “The idea that there is an inevitability of a no-deal Brexit would be a quite wrong suggestion,” he said. “There is a long way to go.”
Bercow later suggested he would stay on as Speaker until Brexit is resolved, in a comment likely to inflame tensions with euro-skeptics in the government. While there are still “great issues to be resolved,” it does not seem “sensible to vacate the chair,” he told the Guardian newspaper.
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