Parliament voted 322 to 306 in favour of an amendment put forward by Oliver Letwin, a former Conservative cabinet minister, that withheld support for the Brexit deal Johnson clinched with the EU on Thursday.
According to legislation passed earlier, the vote means Johnson is obliged to write to the EU seeking a delay beyond Britain’s scheduled departure date of Oct. 31.
But Johnson has repeatedly said he will not do this and on Saturday he stuck to that line.
“I will not negotiate a delay with the EU and neither does the law compel me to do so,” Johnson told parliament.
“I will tell our friends and colleagues in the EU exactly what I have told everyone else in the last 88 days that I have served as prime minister: that further delay would be bad for this country, bad for the European Union and bad for democracy.”
The European Commission said Britain must now inform the EU executive of its next steps as soon as possible.
The government will not now hold a vote on its Brexit deal on Saturday as planned. Parliament will debate and vote on Monday on whether to approve Johnson’s Brexit deal, the leader of the House of Commons Jacob Rees-Mogg said.
On a day of high drama, lawmakers held the first Saturday sitting since the 1982 Argentine invasion of the Falklands, while hundreds of thousands of people gathered to march on parliament demanding another referendum on EU membership.
Protesters gathered outside the parliament building cheered as lawmakers voted in favour of Letwin’s amendment.
AMENDMENT
The amendment proposed that a decision on whether to back a Brexit deal be deferred until all the legislation needed to implement it has been passed through parliament.
Johnson believes this can be achieved by Oct. 31. Others think it would need a short ‘technical’ delay in Britain’s departure from the EU to pass the legislation.
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-eu/johnson-defiant-after-british-parliament-votes-to-force-brexit-delay