https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/...ohnson-and-grant-a-brexit-extension-2vg9g7b30
Article text:
The European Union could grant another Brexit delay even if the letter making a request for an extension beyond October 31 is not signed by the prime minister.
European leaders are on standby to hold an emergency Brexit summit in the last week of the month if Boris Johnson fails to get a new withdrawal agreement past the House of Commons in the next two weeks.
Under the terms of the Benn act, the government must ask for a further extension to the Article 50 process if he does not have Commons approval for a new agreement or the support of MPs for a no-deal Brexit by October 19.
Mr Johnson has said repeatedly that he will not comply with the legislation but it is understood that the government as represented by the cabinet secretary, as head of the civil service, would make the request and accept a further delay.
“I am sure the system will produce what we need to get to an extension,” a senior EU source said. “We don’t care who it is, whether it is the prime minister or another representative of the executive.”
Norbert Röttgen, chairman of the German parliament’s foreign affairs committee and a senior Christian Democrat, said that an extension would be needed because Mr Johnson’s latest Brexit plans were “not serious and violate the law”, both in terms of the EU’s single market and the Benn act.
“He wants to ask the EU not to extend the deadline and proposes a backstop that de facto is a hard border,” he tweeted. “Not least to protect the sovereignty of the British parliament, EU should give long extension.”
Many senior European diplomatic sources said that the request for one extension until January 31 could come from “the head of government or head of state” which means either the prime minister or a representative of the Crown, embodied by the civil service. “What Article 50 says and requires is that the extension is agreed with the UK. Strictly speaking it is silent on whether there should be a request or where the request should come from,” a source said.
A Whitehall source told The Times that the extension letter could be sent by Sir Mark Sedwill, the cabinet secretary, or Sir Tim Barrow, the UK’s ambassador to the EU, should the prime minister refuse to sign or send it.
One European ambassador said that EU leaders had agreed to “really look at the situation in the UK and see what the political argument would be for such a request” at the meeting of the European Council in Brussels on October 17.
“People realise how difficult the situation is in the UK,” they said. “If there’s a request to extend because they need time to come to a national consensus on where they want to go, that’s always preferable to no deal. I don’t think [any leader] is willing to take the political risk, regardless of everything, of running into a no-deal situation.”
According to diplomats, no European leader — not even President Macron, the most hardline — has reached the point of wanting to veto an extension and force Britain out. “Europe will have no other choice if there’s an extension request than to grant it,” said an official. “Politically, I don’t see how we could refuse it. The Europeans don’t want to take the responsibility for no deal.”
