‘Another day closer to no-deal chaos’
Tory rebels kill latest try to move forward on Brexit
Prime Minister Theresa May said Britain was likely to crash out of Europe without a deal after she suffered another humiliating defeat in Parliament Thursday.
The vote was only symbolic, but demonstrated once again how divided the House of Commons is over Brexit and how there is no clear strategy within the government or Parliament on dealing with Europe.
“Another day of failed politics, another day closer to no-deal chaos,” Carolyn Fairbairn, director general of the U.K.’S business lobby, the Confederation of British Industry, said on Twitter. “Politicians must find a deal that protects our economy. Failure would be unforgivable.”
While May blamed Thursday’s defeat on Labour politicians who voted against her, it was actually Conservatives in her own party who were responsible for the devastating defeat.
A total of 66 Conservatives — including former foreign minister Boris Johnson — abstained in a motion over the government’s way forward. May lost by 303 votes to 258.
At the heart of the rebel Tory concerns is that voting for May’s strategy going forward with the EU would require taking “no deal” off the table. The rebels believe that would hurt Britain in the negotiations.
They want Europe to clearly understand that if no deal is reached by March 29 then Britain will leave with “no deal” with the resulting chaos that could then ensue for everybody.
Thursday night the rebel group — known as the European Research Group (ERG) — was accused of treachery by Business Minister Richard Harrington.
“The prime minister has done a pretty good job of standing up to them up till now, but they were drinking champagne to celebrate her losing her deal and I regard that as being treachery,” he wrote in the House magazine.
The ERG also claimed that the result proved that the only way May could get a deal through Parliament was if she persuaded the EU to drop the Northern Ireland backstop completely and replace it with “alternative arrangements.”
The Irish backstop is a way to guarantee trade continues to move between Northern Ireland (in the U.K.) and southern Ireland (in the EU) without hard customs borders. But some politicians fear this could tie the whole of the U.K. into a customs union with the EU indefinitely, in effect a rejection of Brexit.