Brexit twists and turns continue as leave date nears

Aside from reporting over the past fortnight on the two sessions, like many British people I have also had one eye on the somewhat less orderly events in the United Kingdom parliament.

This has usually involved getting up very early to watch reports on various TV channels about the previous night’s Brexit votes, of which there have been a great many.

One tends to ask oneself whether you are witnessing your own country going through some form of existential meltdown or representa- tive parliamentary democracy in the raw that will eventually deliver a workable result.

The one question I get asked here more than any other by Chinese people when they discover I am British is what do I think about it all.

I did report from the UK on the 2016 referendum and have interviewed some of the leading figures in the debate, including former chancellors of the exchequer Kenneth Clarke and George Osborne, as well as former prime minister Tony Blair, all of who opposed Brexit.

I actually did not vote myself due to technical registration reasons, but if I had I would have voted for the UK to remain in the European Union.

This would not be for any love of the EU but to avoid the ensuing chaos that a leave vote might result in — although I never envisaged anything like the fractiousness we have had over the past nearly three years.

I was one who did think, however, that the UK would have to make a decision on its continued membership at some point, perhaps in the mid-2020s, as part of a debate the EU might then have about its future direction.

Prime Minister Theresa May’s withdrawal agreement is set to come back to the House of Commons for a third meaningful vote, possibly Tuesday, if there is no further delay.

It was rejected in January by 230 votes and last week by 149 but the indications are that it will be much closer this time.

If it receives support from the 10 members of the Democratic Unionist Party with whom May’s administration has a “confidence and supply” arrangement (which guarantees their support on finance bills and other important legislation), a large proportion of the 75 Conservative MPs who voted against last week and some more Labour opposition MPs, it might even be voted through.

If it is, then the UK would likely leave the EU on June 30, three months later than the previously set date of March 29.

If it doesn’t, there could be a fourth vote and, if that fails, an extension in the UK’s leave date of up to two years, subject to whatever is negotiated with the EU.

If May does manage to get the deal through, it would be an extraordinary achievement, given that it had previously been defeated by a record margin for any government legislation ever brought before parliament.

She would have turned her obstinacy and bloody-mindedness, for which she is much criticized, into a winning attritional strategy, wearing down her opponents one by one.

Even if her deal fails to get through parliament, it could be put before the British people in the form of a second referendum, perhaps as early as June.

You might think that this would create a dilemma for previous remainers such as myself, and it partly does.

Yet many British people I know in a wide range of fields, including in the business community in China, are now resigned to leaving.

As May wrote in an article in the Sunday Telegraph at the weekend, “I am convinced that the time to define ourselves by how we voted in 2016 must now end’’.

Constructing a new relationship with the rest of the world, including Europe and China, will no doubt be a challenge, but it is one that can be surely achieved with unity of purpose.

We must cease to be defined as either leavers or remainers.