Today’s the day? No, just another chaotic Friday
Today was going to be Brexit day. Leave voters were going to throw parties. The Royal Mint was going to produce a celebratory 50p coin. Peter Bone, the Tory MP for Wellingborough, was going to unveil a statue he’d commissioned of Theresa May – or, as he used to call her, “the Brexit Queen”.
Not any more. Instead of basking in the glow of triumph, the Prime Minister will spend today in the Commons, forlornly begging MPS once again to vote for her version of Brexit. While some Brexiteers have pledged reluctant support, Mark Francois (Con, Rayleigh & Wickford) may take a little more convincing. “I wouldn’t vote for it,” he said yesterday, “if they put a shotgun in my mouth.” We’ll put him down as a maybe. The announcement of the vote was typically chaotic. At midday, Andrea Leadsom – Leader of the Commons, Vote Leave veteran and leading June Whitfield lookalike – cryptically informed MPS that they would be called in today (unusual for a Friday) to debate “a motion relating to the UK’S withdrawal from the EU”. But she wouldn’t actually tell them what the motion would be.
MPS were up in arms. Was this “Meaningful Vote Three”? Hadn’t the Speaker ruled that out?
Chris Bryant (Lab, Rhondda) accused the Government of something
he called “shenaniganating”. Ben Bradshaw (Lab, Exeter) suspected “potentially illegal trickery”. Neil Gray (SNP, Airdrie & Shotts) called Mrs Leadsom “sleekit”, a Scottish word for sneaky. (The SNP love getting Scottish insults into Hansard. According to Peter Grant, MP for Glenrothes, the Government has made a complete “bahookie” of Brexit, while Alison Thewlis, MP for Glasgow Central, has accused Mrs May of “fuddery”. The Speaker would surely have ruled both these terms unparliamentary if he’d known what they meant.)
Westminster was flummoxed. The BBC tried asking Nigel Evans (Con, Ribble Valley). “All we know about tomorrow,” he sighed, “is it’s called Friday.” Finally, around teatime, Mrs Leadsom revealed all. The Government was splitting the deal, to ask MPS to vote on the Withdrawal Agreement, but not the Political Declaration. A dubious piece of jiggery-pokery, but it at least got around the Speaker’s ban on holding the same vote twice.
Sir Edward Leigh (Con, Gainsborough) urged Brexiteers to vote with Mrs May. If they didn’t, he quivered, they would face either “permanent membership of the customs union – or a general election”.
An election. Imagine. If it gets called in the next couple of weeks, the Tories won’t have had time to hold a leadership contest. So they’d be stuck with Mrs May and Tory candidates would have to ask the public to vote for a PM who’s promised to quit – and whose approach to Brexit they themselves oppose. In short: an election is the one thing that could leave us in an even bigger mess than we’re already in. It’s bound to happen.