(CNN)Boris Johnson keeps saying he really, really doesn’t want an election. In reality, he wants nothing more. It’s the only way out of the Brexit mess he finds himself in.
The British Prime Minister has been cornered by his own political missteps and parliamentary defeats. He is still insisting he will take the UK out of the European Union on October 31 — with or without a deal. But his negotiations with the EU appear more or less dead in the water and Parliament passed a bill this week that requires him to ask the EU for an extension if no agreement is reached.
Johnson said he would rather be “dead in a ditch” than ask for a delay but also refused to say he’d resign if it got to that point. He wrote to Conservative MPs to say that asking the EU for a Brexit extension “is something I will never do,” reported the Daily Telegraph, which saw a copy of the letter he sent on Friday night.
