this is wild, bill, the equivalent would be if congress back home stopped doing anything for five weeks at a time, not during the month of august, right? >> reporter: yeah, crazy. wildit. there's also chaos, turmoil, unprecedented. i mean, this is the greatest political and constitutional crisis britain has faced since world war ii. yet astonishingly as you say the british parliament is being shut down for five weeks by none other than the prime minister. britain is set to leave the european union in seven weeks. he's lost his majority in parliament, expelled more than 20 very senior lawmakers from his own party, including the grandson of his political hero winston churchill, his own brother quit as a minister saying that was good for the country. he's lost his scottish leader. absolute carnage, civil war in his own party and there's speculation he could resign. and more than that, he now faces the prospect of legal action, arrest, even a jail sentence. >> wow. >> if he defies a new law that's just been passed requiring him to ask the your phone union to extend britain's membership of the eu. that's a new possibility, hallie, in british politics, the arrest and jail