May ‘to give MPs a free vote if her deal fails’
‘Titania’s’ right-on nonsense on Twitter was swallowed by an army of gullible followers. As it’s revealed she’s really the satirical creation of a (male) Oxford academic...
THERESA May will allow MPs a free vote on whether to pursue No Deal next week if her own proposals are defeated, two of her allies said last night.
They said she accepted it would be impossible to whip a vote on No Deal without causing a destabilising wave of resignations that could bring down her fragile government.
‘Whichever way you whipped it, it would split the party,’ one said. ‘A free vote is inevitable.’
Chancellor Philip Hammond also hinted at the move yesterday. Asked if he would resign if he was ordered to vote for No Deal, he said: ‘That is something I don’t think will happen.’
With Brussels still stalling on negotiations and Eurosceptic opinion hardening again, ministers are braced for potential defeat when MPs vote on Mrs May’s deal a second time on Tuesday.
But sources insist the PM believes there is still hope of last-minute turnaround – provided the EU gives ground on the controversial Irish backstop.
Attorney General Geoffrey Cox and Brexit Secretary Steve Barclay are on standby to return to Brussels as early as today if officials indicate there is the prospect of a breakthrough.
Mrs May is also ready to fly to Brussels for talks with EU Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker, which could take place on Monday morning, barely 24 hours before the vote.
In a speech in Grimsby, Lincolnshire, today she will warn Brussels that it will bear responsibility if the talks collapse, saying the EU’s decisions over the next 72 hours will have ‘a big impact on the outcome of the vote’.
She is expected to add: ‘Just as MPs will face a big choice next week, the EU has to make a choice, too.
‘We are both participants in this process. It is in the European interest for the UK to leave with a deal.
‘We are working with them but the decisions the European Union makes over the next few days will have a big impact on the outcome of the vote.’ She will also warn Eurosceptic MPs they risk having Brexit watered down beyond recognition – or losing it altogether – if they vote down her deal. The Government lost the first ‘meaningful vote’ on Mrs May’s deal in January by a record 230 votes.
The prospect of Brexit being delayed or blocked left some Eurosceptic MPs suggesting they could be persuaded to back the deal the second time around.
Some Labour MPs have also suggested that they could vote for it following concessions by Mrs May on protections for workers’ rights after Brexit and a £1.6billion fund for towns in the North that have been ‘left behind’.
But senior Tories admit that opposition to the deal has hardened, and fear it is set for a second heavy defeat unless there is a breakthrough in Brussels.
If it is defeated, Mrs May has promised to hold votes in the following days on whether to pursue No Deal on March 29 or ask the EU to delay Brexit.
Allowing Tory MPs to vote against Government policy on the two issues will embarrass the Prime Minister and anger Eurosceptic MPs. But allies believe it will be less damaging than resignations caused by trying to order MPs to vote for or against No Deal.
Cabinet ministers, including Mr Hammond, Justice Secretary David Gauke and Business Secretary Greg Clark, are also urging the PM to then hold ‘indicative votes’ on softer Brexit options, such as a customs union or a Norwaystyle deal, to find a consensus.
A cross-party group of MPs has already warned it will try to seize control of Brexit if the Prime Minister’s deal is defeated. Former Tory minister Sir Oliver Letwin said MPs would try to hold indicative votes on March 19 in the hope of finding a consensus.
Mr Hammond warned pro-Brexit MPs they risked a softer Brexit if they joined forces with Labour to defeat Mrs May’s deal. He said: ‘If the deal does not get approved, it is likely the Commons will vote to extend Article 50, to not leave the EU without a deal. Where we go thereafter is highly uncertain.’
‘Where we go is highly uncertain’
Twitter, it is has to be said, is not known for its subtlety or sense of humour. with, that is, one notable exception: titania McGrath.
For the uninitiated, titania Gethsemane McGrath is a radical vegan, woke poet committed to feminism, social justice and armed, peaceful protest. She works to expose racism, bigotry and misogyny. As she herself confesses: ‘i was born woke. My wokeness is innate. it flows through me like a magical elixir, keeping my soul perched and poised for the fight.’
woke, for those of you born before 1990 who may, understandably, be unfamiliar with the term, is to be terribly earnest (or pretentious) about how much you care about social issues, particularly racism.
i first came across this bespectacled, earnest-looking blonde on twitter last summer, when someone on my timeline re-tweeted something she’d said.
i wasn’t really paying attention and took her words (something offensive about people who voted Brexit, as i recall) at face value. i was about to get all wound up about it (as one does on twitter) until the friend messaged me to say it was a parody account to send up the modern obsessions with gender fluidity, identity politics and cultural appropriation.
i felt a bit stupid — and i wasn’t the only one. Countless twitter users have since been fooled by titania — who has nearly 200,000 followers — and agreed with or railed against her earnest pronouncements. twitter was taken in, suspending the account briefly following complaints last December. even satirical magazine Private eye recently featured a tweet by titania McGrath in Pseuds’ Corner.
Luckily titania was reinstated, her brush with the internet patriarchy having only served to strengthen her resolve in the face of Big tech fascism.
this week we finally learned the identity of the person behind titania. She isn’t even a woman (or, as she would put it, a non- binary feminist icon). She was unmasked as Andrew Doyle, 40, a former private school teacher with a doctorate in early renaissance poetry from wadham College, Oxford.
Mr Doyle drew on his academic background when setting up the account, using the name titania, the queen of the fairies in william Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
‘She is named after the queen of the fairies because i think all of this “woke culture” is an utter fantasy world,’ he said. ‘ the people who promote this hyperinclusive culture are fantasists.’
FOrmany of us, the modern millennial world is a minefield, a social battleground where, at any point, one could unintentionally blow oneself up. Many rail against it, others retreat to the sidelines. the genius of Doyle is that he takes it down in a way that is extremely witty — and clever.
Such is his success that yesterday ‘titania’ published her first book, ‘woke: A Guide to Social Justice.’
thus, in titania, we find all the arrogance (‘i cannot but help come to the conclusion that i am the only living artist worthy of note), and entitlement (‘beyond the provision of DNA and a modest trust fund, i cannot see what purpose my father has served’) of today’s self- styled social justice ‘keyboard warriors’.
She also exposes the unconscious bigotry (it is not racist to hate someone on the basis of their skin colour if that person is white) of the woke brigade.
Oh, and let’s not forget the hypocrisy: ‘i was the only child of two barristers. i learnt only that my private education and frequent family holidays to Montenegro and the Maldives were merely a ruse by which my parents could distract me from my oppression.’
the secret of the character’s success is, of course, her plausibility. Social media is awash with people spouting nonsense, from the mad to the merely misinformed. Her twitterings were just the right side of believable.
indeed, there are many occasions when she is indistinguishable from the likes of prominent figures such as left-wing journalists Owen Jones, writer Laurie Penny or columnist Afua Hirsch (who once argued Nelson’s column in trafalgar Square should be removed because it was a symbol of white supremacist patriarchal oppression).
Or, as titania herself would put it: ‘if you don’t think exactly the same way as me, then you’ve clearly got a lot to learn about diversity.’
One of titania’s most convincing attributes is her lack of self-knowledge, a tendency to take for granted the privileges that come as standard for her generation — and an inability to see things from anyone else’s point of view.
‘People are far too sentimental about the elderly,’ she writes. ‘i am no longer helping them cross the street. they opted for Brexit, so as far as i’m concerned they can take their chances with the traffic. remember too that these are the people who fought in the second world war. How can shooting at Germans be anything other than xenophobic?’
Statementssuch as these are, of course, absurd and funny. But they also sail close to the wind. Compare the above with the comment of the former Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg (the original virtue-signalling politician) in 2017 that older voters were to blame for Brexit and that, now they were dying off, a second referendum should be held in order for the younger generation to return the correct result, i.e. remain.
Or look at Prince Harry’s speech on wednesday. He said: ‘You may find yourselves frustrated with the older generation when it seems like they don’t care.’
the world today is now so obsessed with maximum political correctness that it’s hard to distinguish between reality and parody.
Just as Bridget Jones was the embodiment of the anxiety-ridden Nineties feminist, a creation whose diary entries encapsulated all our hopes, fears and failures, so titania McGrath is her millennial successor, a girl every bit as lost and confused, every bit as accurately observed — and equally, catastrophically, hilarious.