Boris Johnson Has Badly Miscalculated

After just 43 days in office, U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson has gotten himself into a dire fix. Unfortunately, there’s no easy way out — for him or for the country he nominally leads.

Thanks to a series of miscalculations, Johnson’s party is cracking up, his government is collapsing, and his political strategy is backfiring. This week, he ejected 21 rebels from the parliamentary Conservative Party after they joined the opposition to stop him from forcing the country out of the European Union without an exit agreement. To restore his authority and a workable majority, the prime minister then called for a prompt general election — and lost that vote as well, failing to muster the necessary two-thirds support.