Did Boris Johnson ‘get Brexit done’ by accident or design?

For a few strange months in 2019, Boris Johnson’s authority as prime minister was challenged by MPs including Oliver Letwin. John Rentoul digs into the archives

Oliver Letwin, the man who nearly stopped Brexit

The first five months of Boris Johnson’s time as prime minister were some of the most remarkable in recent British history. His struggle with a deadlocked parliament tested the constitution to the limit, before ending suddenly in an election on terms favourable to him.

Historians will long puzzle over how it happened. Was the election Johnson’s cunning plan all along, did it come about because of mistakes made by Jo Swinson and Jeremy Corbyn, or was it likely to be the result of the gridlock anyway? These are the questions that lie behind a project by my colleagues at King’s College London, whose think tank UK in a Changing Europe has carried out long interviews with many of the leading characters in that drama.

The most recent batch to be published includes one with Oliver Letwin, one of the leaders of the Remainer majority in the 2017-19 parliament. Given that the authority of the government rests on a majority in parliament, he and his Remainer allies set themselves up as a kind of alternative government by mobilising a differently constituted majority in the same House of Commons.