Second defeat for PM leaves Brexit hopes in disarray
May: ‘We now face unenviable choices’
THERESA MAY is braced for a showdown with MPs over whether Britain should now leave the European Union without a deal after a second crushing rejection of her Brexit plan in a tense Commons vote last night.
The Prime Minister’s Withdrawal Agreement was defeated resoundingly by 391 votes to 242 despite a number of Tories changing position to back it.
Mrs May had earlier told the Commons that new agreements reached with EU chiefs in Strasbourg would ensure the UK cannot be trapped in the controversial Irish backstop arrangement indefinitely.
But last night’s defeat means her government has no immediate prospect of getting a Brexit deal through Parliament with just 16 days to go until the UK leaves on March 29.
And she faced further pressure after an influential Tory backbencher suggested the defeat could trigger a General Election “within a matter of days”.
Charles Walker, vice chairman of the 1922 Committee of backbench Tory MPs, told BBC Radio 4’s World At One: “If it doesn’t go through tonight, as sure as night follows day, there will be a general election within a matter of days or weeks. It is not sustainable, the current situation in Parliament.”
Speaking in the House following the 149-vote defeat, Mrs May confirmed that MPs would today get the chance to vote on whether the Government should press
ahead a with a no-deal Brexit on March 29, adding that her party would be given a free vote on the issue. If that is rejected the Commons will then be offered the chance to delay Brexit, and consider a series of options on how to break the deadlock.
Struggling to be heard having almost lost her voice, Mrs May said: “The deal we’ve negotiated is the best and indeed the only deal available. Let me be clear. Voting against leaving without a deal and for an extension does not solve the problems we face.
“The EU will want to know what use we mean to make of such an extension and this House will have to answer that question. Does it wish to revoke Article 50? Does it want to hold a second referendum? Or does it want to leave with a deal, but not this deal?
“These are unenviable choices. Thanks to the decision that the House has made this evening, they are choices that must now be faced.”
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said the result showed that Mrs May’s deal was “dead” and demanded a general election to pave a way forward.
He added that Labour would once again put their own Brexit deal before MPs, which would see Britain remain in a closer trading relationship with the EU.
Responding to the prospect of an Article 50 extension, leading Eurosceptic Jacob Rees-Mogg warned that delaying Brexit could be more difficult that some had assumed.
“The default legal position remains, as the Prime Minister pointed out, that we still leave on March 29,” he told the BBC. “It would have to be changed by law, and the law is not easy to change.”
The vote came after a fierce day of debate in the Commons, with many MPs criticising the Government’s handling of the Brexit process.
The deal we’ve negotiated is the best and indeed the only deal available. Prime Minister Theresa May speaking after the vote.
THERESA MAY’S hopes of securing House of Commons approval for her Brexit deal suffered a shattering blow as Tory eurosceptics said they would not back it and her DUP allies said they would vote against.
Hours before the Prime Minister was defeated by 149 votes last night, a so-called Star Chamber convened by the Leave-backing European Research Group found that agreements reached by Mrs May in 11th-hour talks in Strasbourg do not deliver the legallybinding changes the Commons has demanded.
And the Democratic Unionist Party – which props up Mrs May’s minority administration in the Commons – said its 10 MPs would vote against the latest deal as “sufficient progress has not been achieved at this time”.
On a day of drama at Westminster, their judgment came after Attorney General Geoffrey Cox told MPs that changes secured by Mrs May “reduce the risk” that the UK could be trapped indefinitely in the backstop, but do not remove it altogether.
The Prime Minister, battling a croaky voice and with husband Philip watching from the Commons gallery, warned MPs that “Brexit could be lost” if her deal was rejected again by MPs.
She said it was “absolutely imperative” that Parliament should deliver on the decision made by voters in the 2016 referendum.
She warned: “Tonight, members of this House are faced with a very clear choice. Support this deal, in which case we leave the EU with a deal, or risk no deal or no Brexit. These are the options.”
Mrs May needed to win over scores of MPs yesterday to overturn the 230-vote majority which rejected her Withdrawal Agreement
in the first “meaningful vote” in January. But her prospects for doing so suffered a fatal blow after the release of formal legal advice by Mr Cox.
The Attorney General said the Strasbourg agreements “reduce the risk that the United Kingdom could be indefinitely and involuntarily detained” in the backstop if the EU fails to show good faith in negotiating a trade deal to replace it.
But he warned that the question of whether a satisfactory agreement on a future UK/EU relationship can be reached remains “a political judgment”. And he said “the legal risk remains unchanged” that the UK may have “no internationally lawful means” of leaving the backstop without EU agreement. In a statement to the Commons, Mr Cox told MPs: “There is no ultimate unilateral right out of this arrangement. The risk of that continues. But the question is whether it is a likelihood, politically.”
Shadow Brexit Secretary Sir Keir Starmer said Mr Cox had confirmed that “no significant changes” had been secured in two months of negotiations and the Government’s strategy was “in tatters”.
During the debate, a number of leading Leavers, including Jacob Rees-Mogg, said they would have backed Mrs May if they thought there was a genuine risk that voting against her would stop Brexit. But Mr Rees-Mogg dismissed the threat as a “phantom”.
Brexit figurehead and former foreign secretary Boris Johnson told the Commons that Mrs May and Mr Cox had “sowed an apron of fig leaves that does nothing to conceal the embarrassment and indignity of the UK”.
MPs showed not only were they widely against Mrs May’s deal, but that they enjoy thinking up elaborate names for it.
Grant Shapps said a colleague had told him the PM “went looking for a rabbit, but only managed a hamster”. Clive Lewis described it as a “polished t**d”, and Andrew Bridgen called it the Hotel California Brexit, because “we’ve checked out but we never actually get to leave”.
The exchanges in the chamber captured the attention of the EU’s chief negotiator Michel Barnier, who tweeted to rebuke MPs, saying that as he was listening to the debate in the Commons “there seems to be a dangerous illusion” that the UK could enjoy a transition period without a Brexit deal. He stressed: “No Withdrawal Agreement means no transition.”
FOR MOST political observers, this week already has all the portents of being one of the most significant in British post-war history after Theresa May’s EU Withdrawal Agreement suffered a second heavy defeat in Parliament.
Though the 149-vote loss was less than Mrs May’s record 230-vote defeat of eight weeks ago, this outcome is, potentially, even more damaging to the PM’s authority because of the proximity of March 29 when the UK is due to leave the EU with or without a deal.
Even though MPs are now expected to vote to rule out a no-deal Brexit, Sir Anthony Seldon, the renowned biographer of premiers, went further and suggested that Parliament has not been more turbulent, or unpredictable, since the First World War.
Yet, as politicians consider their next steps, and respected business leaders like CBI directorgeneral Carolyn Fairbairn tell The Yorkshire Post that continuing uncertainty will harm the economy, Sir Anthony’s wider assessment illustrates the size of the task confronting Mrs May as she fights, once again, to save her premiership.
He suggested a leader with the tactical acumen of Winston Churchill, guile of David Lloyd George and charm of Clement Attlee would have struggled after David Cameron quit immediately in the wake of the June 2016 referendum.
Combined with deep divisions on the Tory benches, a Labour party in disarray under Jeremy Corbyn, Northern Ireland’s intractable DUP now holding the balance of power and a self-serving European Union also in denial over the reasons behind Britain’s decision to vote to leave, Mrs May’s tenacity in political adversity should still not be underestimated.
She might have been at fault for not building a cross-party coalition of the willing at the start of her premiership to deliver Brexit and going back on her word by calling an illadvised snap election in 2017, but she has been let down by arch-Eurosceptic colleagues who abdicated their responsibilities and also those ideologically diehard Brexiteers who still appear irreconcilable.
Yet, while Westminster is now fixated by the blame game after Attorney General Geoffrey Cox’s legal advice on the so-called Northern Irish backstop was greeted with weary resignation by increasingly despondent Ministers and MPs, the key question is this: what next after EU supremo JeanClaude Juncker warned Mrs May in Strasbourg that no further compromises could be expected of him?
The fact of the matter is that there is a country awaiting leadership and clarity as today’s Spring Statement by Philip Hammond, the Chancellor, is overshadowed by the fallout from last night’s vote – and the permutations of upcoming votes amid speculation that a General Election will have to be called in the near future.
In many respects, one of the more responsible interventions came from Ken Clarke, a former Chancellor, who said the backstop debate would be redundant if Britain and the EU negotiated a trade deal. Coming from an elder statesman who, incidentally, opposed the triggering of Article 50, it was a rare moment of enlightenment from a Parliamentarian steeped in law, politics and the economy – all of which are integral to Brexit.
And while the toxicity of political discourse means that Mr Clarke’s views will be dismissed because he is an advocate for the EU, he does have a point as many Tory and Labour MPs continue to conveniently forget that they were elected in 2017 on manifestos that committed both main parties to implementing the referendum result.
Not only, therefore, will Parliament’s response in the coming hours and days shape Theresa May’s future, but it will set the tone for the country’s relations with the EU if and when trade talks can begin. Given that the stakes could not be any higher, now who has the necessary statesmanship?