HISTORIC DEAL... BUT MP SPOIL IT WITH YET MORE DITHERING
PM wins ‘joyful’ victory only for Commons to dash hopes of October 31 exit
SBRITAIN’S hopes of leaving the EU by the end of the month were shattered last night after MPs rejected Boris Johnson’s timetable for delivering his Brexit deal. On an evening of high farce at Westminster, the Prime Minister finally won Commons backing for his Withdrawal Agreement – only to see his victory soured by fresh parliamentary skulduggery from Remainers.
He was forced to put ratification of his deal on
hold to ask the EU to consider Parliament’s request for a delay.
A deflated Mr Johnson hailed his brief victory as “joyful” but expressed his “disappointment” at MPs’ refusal to finally resolve the deadlock.
He said the Withdrawal Agreement Bill will be “paused” while the EU considers what happens next – but the PM insisted he would still ask EU leaders to help him ensure the country leaves the bloc on schedule.
Mr Johnson said: “Let me be clear. Our policy remains that we should not delay, that we should leave the EU on October 31.”
In extraordinary scenes in the Commons last night, MPs voted by 329 votes to 299 to give the Prime Minister’s Withdrawal Agreement a formal second reading.
The vote – the first time a majority of MPs have voted in favour of a Brexit deal – meant the Commons backed his departure plans in principle.
Among the backers were 19 Labour MPs who defied Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn to support the deal.
But in a second vote, MPs voted by 308 to 322 against Mr Johnson’s timetable for getting the legislation through in less than three days.
The setback infuriated Brexiteer MPs. Tory backbencher Philip Davies last night said: “The people who voted against the programme motion don’t actually want more time. They want to stop Brexit.”
And the Prime Minister’s spokesman said he still “believes we
should leave on October 31” and said any extension would be “corrosive”.
Over the next few days, Mr Johnson will be forced to call EU chiefs Jean-Claude Juncker and Donald Tusk to work out the next steps for Brexit.
Mr Tusk last night predicted that the bloc will grant a Brexit delay until January 31.
He tweeted: “Following PM Boris Johnson’s decision to pause the process of ratification of the Withdrawal Agreement, and in order to avoid a no-deal Brexit, I will recommend the EU27 accept
the UK request for an extension.” Responding to the two votes yesterday, Mr Johnson said: “Can I say in response how welcome it is, even joyful, that for the first time in this long saga, this House has actually accepted its responsibilities together. Come together and embraced a deal.
“I congratulate honourable members across the House on the scale of our collective achievement because a few weeks ago, hardly anybody believed that we could reopen the Withdrawal Agreement, let alone abolish the backstop.
“And certainly nobody thought
we could secure the approval of the House for a new deal.
“We should not overlook the significance of this moment. One way or another we will leave the EU with this deal, to which this House has just given its assent.”
However, Mr Johnson added: “I must express my disappointment that the House has again voted for delay, rather than a timetable that would have guaranteed the UK would be in a position to leave the EU on October 31 with a deal.
“We now face further uncertainty. The first consequence is that the Government must take the only responsible course and accelerate our preparations for a nodeal outcome.”
Immediately after the vote, Mr Corbyn offered to work with the Government to try to agree a new timetable for the legislation.
The Labour leader said: “The House has refused to be bounced into debating a hugely significant piece of legislation in just two days with barely any notice or an analysis of the economic impact.
“The Prime Minister is the author of his own misfortune. So I make this offer to him tonight: work with all of us to agree a rea
sonable timetable, and I suspect this House will vote to debate, scrutinise – and I hope amend – the detail of this Bill.”
Downing Street officials said Mr Johnson would consider the offer.
Before the vote, the PM threatened to “pull” the legislation and attempt to trigger a general election if MPs failed to back his timetable.
He said: “I will in no way allow months more of this.”
During the debate, a string of MPs – including former Tory minister Dominic Grieve and former Cabinet minister Rory Stewart – demanded more time for to scrutinise the legislation.
But Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage last night said Mr Johnson’s “do or die” pledge to leave the EU by October 31 was over.
“We have now moved on to dying in a ditch,” he said.
The European Parliament’s Brexit coordinator GuyVerhofstadt reacted to the news by making a joke about Mr Farage.
He said: “You’re all thinking: another extension. I am thinking: another three weeks listening to Farage.”
POPE Benedict XVI abolished Limbo in 2007, as the Catholic Leader of the House Jacob Rees-Mogg pointed out last night. But it seems that in the strange political times in which we live MPs have managed to reinvent it.
In Catholic theology, Limbo is the place where souls exist between salvation and damnation. That is now the technical term for where the Commons left the EU deal last night.
By voting to support the Second Reading for the Withdrawal Agreement Bill by a majority of 30, MPs finally gave their approval for a conclusion to Brexit.
But the moment of rejoicing last night was short-lived because minutes later MPs then voted against the business motion that would have allowed it to go through the Commons and eventually become law, ending the tortures of the Brexit debate.
Mr Rees-Mogg suggested that MPs had left it in the pains of purgatory. But the reality is that the British public and the state of our democracy are trapped in the nine circles of Hell. There seems to be no end and no way out.
MPs, particularly Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party, have indeed put themselves in the place of demons and devils inflicting agonies on our democracy and, in their refusal to respect the EU referendum result, consigning it to the flames. It is worth noting that Corbyn said more time was needed for the Bill but his party ran out of speakers in the Second Reading debate more than an hour before its conclusion.
There has to be an end to this. How many knife-edge votes are going to irrevocably injure our democracy? At some point it will be too wounded to get back on its feet.
If the deal cannot go through Parliament, then MPs must put themselves up for election and allow the voters to decide whether they are consigned to the abyss they deserve.