Stakes in this game of poker are the highest for decades
Imagine the mental torture that many Labour mPs are suffering this weekend as they wrestle with their consciences. Those representing constituencies which voted Leave in the eU referendum must choose whether to help see through voters’ wishes by backing Theresa may’s exit deal, or defy them by following their own leader and stymie Brexit.
all this week in Westminster they have been inundated with letters and emails urging them to honour their voters. But this weekend they will be back on their home turf being told the same thing to their faces.
One mP has told me how surprised he and his colleagues have been by the volume of correspondence.
What has long been a low rumble of discontent is increasingly becoming dismay and anger. it could yet turn into a political earthquake with profound consequences for how Brexit is achieved.
it is estimated that about 160 Labour mPs represent constituencies that voted Leave. One Labour backbencher says: ‘my constituency is not a big letter-writing constituency or an email-writing one. But i’m getting lots on Brexit. They all say the same thing: “The country voted to Leave, make sure we do.” ’
another tells me that he expects alarmed constituents to stop him for chats and reassurance when he goes to his local supermarket today.
He says: ‘People come up to me and say: “Brexit will happen, won’t it? Don’t let us down.” ’ The message is simple: get on with it!
Some voters quote the infamous leaflet posted to every household by the Cameron government during the referendum campaign which said: ‘ This is your decision. The government will implement what you decide.’
They also point to the Labour manifesto from the 2017 general election which contained an unambiguous promise to uphold the result of the referendum.
This pressure — which ratchets daily as march 29 Brexit Day gets closer — is being applied across great swathes of the north of england and the midlands where voters backed Leave and now scent betrayal.
They look to Westmin-ster and see plots to delay article 50, which is the clause in the eU’s Treaty of Lisbon that sets out how a country can leave the union.
Such moves are being orches-trated by backbenchers like Labour’s yvette Cooper, a fierce europhile despite representing a heavily Leave - supporting yorkshire seat.
She is expected to make another blocking manoeuvre in the Commons on Thursday — cynically camouflaged as a means of avoiding a no Deal Brexit.
Some of her Labour colleagues have gone the other way. They have chosen to break with Jeremy Corbyn’s line and have supported the government, or abstained, in critical Brexit votes. These include the independent-minded Caroline Flint, whose Don Valley seat in South yorkshire voted more than 2:1 for Leave.
This week, she hinted that with the right assurances, she could back Theresa may, saying: ‘The British people expect us to work together to sort Brexit.’
Others on the Labour benches are keeping low — quietly terrified about being vilified for voting against mrs may’s deal and being seen to be sabotaging Brexit.
‘They don’t want to go back to their constituencies and say they have not delivered on it,’ a Labour mP says. Labour whips — who are responsible for cajoling their fellow mPs to follow the party line — whisper that the number of rebels is growing.
indeed, a Tory minister mischie-vously credits the rising number of pliable Labour-Leave mPs for his growing optimism about Brexit going ahead.
For her part, mrs may is wisely investing a huge effort in winning over these Labour waverers, invit-ing small groups to no 10 to listen to their concerns and trying to find ways to bring them onside.
you might call this Operation Code Red as no 10 works out a strategy to coax amenable Labour mPs into backing the may Withdrawal Deal.
in the coming days, expect her to make a significant offer of new laws on workers’ rights and the environment. These issues may be identified, traditionally, with Labour, but they are central to the Pm’s own agenda. So they would be easy concessions and would not offend her own side.
in addition, mrs may will make pledges of investment in Leave-voting areas — regardless of accu-sations of ‘ bribery’. and why should she not, if it helps get Brexit through?
The plain truth is that many Leave-voting areas are desperate for more public funds — some-thing emphasised by Labour Brexiteer mP John mann in an article in the mail last week.
indeed, Labour voters would be furious if their mP rejected the opportunity for their area to have new schools, roads, hospitals or other infrastructure.
as former Labour mP Frank Field, who now sits as an inde-pendent in Birkenhead, put it last week: ‘if the government is going to give us money for doing what we think is right, what’s actually wrong with that?’ it is also true that many Labour Leave voters respect mrs may personally, despite their natural party allegiance. They admire her determination and forbearance under great pressure.
Their support may go some way to explaining how two polls in the past week have put the Tories seven points ahead of Labour.
What’s more, mrs may’s cause among such folk has most defi-nitely been boosted by eU Council chief Donald Tusk. His incendiary remarks this week may have been aimed at the leaders of the Leave campaign, who he said deserve a ‘special place in Hell’.
But however they were intende d, many Leavers will have taken them as a personal insult.
Pressure from Labour Leavers may also help explain Corbyn’s decision to come off the fence on Brexit this week. By narrowing his ‘key tests’ for mrs may’s deal, he sent a message that Labour is not a roadblock to Brexit.
OF COURSE, this does not mean mrs may can expect any help from the Labour front bench. They will find any excuse to vote against her if they sniff the chance to bring down the government.
meanwhile, it must be stressed, too, that mrs may has to win over all 316 other Tory mPs.
as it became clear this week, she is going to go to the wire in the hope of extracting something from Brussels on the northern ireland backstop which will placate the rebellious rump of hardline Brexiteers.
On the other side of the Tory divide on europe, she needs her Remainer mPs who fear no Deal to ‘hold their nerve’, as Chancellor Philip Hammond put it.
if they pull the rug from under-neath her by voting to delay Brexit, she’ll have scant hope of securing any meaningful concession from the eU.
This is the biggest game of political poker played for many decades. The stakes couldn’t be higher for the players and for the country. Of course, when the last chips go in, someone will lose everything.
as we begin the final, treacherous descent to march 29, Theresa may must win over hardline Tory eurosceptics. That is still a huge challenge.
yet, if she fails to do so, it could be Labour mPs in Leave seats, looking at their bulging postbags and conscious of the increasingly noisy clamour for Brexit to ‘ just happen’, who eventually help get her over the line.