It was the kind of session that only Parliament can produce: jeering, catcalls, and mid-speech by Prime Minister Boris Johnson the dramatic resignation of a Conservative member of Parliament who got up from his seat and walked over to join his new party the Liberal Democrats.

It was a day when not much went right for Johnson and his Brexit by October 31 or Die! strategy.

Concretely what happened today is that House of Common Speaker John Bercow ruled to start debate on an emergency bill that would require Johnson to ask the European Union for more time to negotiate an orderly departure for the United Kingdom. And Phillip Lee resigned his membership in the Johnson-led Conservative Party to join the Liberal Democrats, who opposed Johnson’s efforts to prorogue Parliament and to take the country out of the European Union even without a deal. As of 5:11  p.m. New York time Johnson lost the vote and his opponents have gained control of the legislative agenda in the House of Commons. That vote clears the way for the House of Commons to debate tomorrow a bill to block a no deal exit. The vote was not especially close at 328-301 signaling that Johnson faces some opposition from within this own Conservative party. (In its coverage the Guardian has wondered if any Prime Minister had ever lost the first vote after forming a government.)

In his response to the vote, Johnson says he will refuse to go along with the bill. If the House of Commons votes for “a pointless delay” to Brexit tomorrow, Johnson said he will seek to hold an election.

Many of the parties in opposition to the Conservatives have responded by demanding passage of the bill before any vote to call a new election.

A significant part of Johnson’s strategy has been to argue that only he can go to Brussels and negotiate an exit deal with the European Union. A bill asking for an extension would undercut, he has said, his leverage in those negotiation. Leaders of the European Union have indicated that Johnson’s claims belong to some fantasy world and they have been at pains to deny his claims of recent progress in talks in Brussels. European Union diplomats briefed by a European commission negotiator about the most recent talks in Brussels with the prime minister’s envoy, David Frost, were told on Tuesday that a no-deal Brexit has never been more likely given the lack of proposals from Downing Street, according to the Guardian. “There was literally nothing on the table, not even a sketch of what the solution could look like,” an EU official familiar with the latest talks with the British government told the Guardian

Before the vote the pound recovered slightly–up 0.02%–after briefly falling to its lowest price since 2017. The euro was basically unchanged.