Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
U.K. vote rebuffs plan on EU exit
LONDON — Prime Minister Theresa May on Tuesday suffered a defeat over her plan to withdraw Britain from the European Union, thrusting the country further into political chaos with only 10 weeks to go until it is scheduled to leave the bloc.
The 432-202 vote to reject her plan was one of the biggest defeats in the House of Commons for a prime minister in recent British history.
In her final appeal in Parliament, May impressed on the lawmakers the importance of the vote facing them. “The responsibility on each and every one of us at this moment is profound,” she said, “for this is a historic decision that will set the future of our country for generations.”
May has signaled that she will appeal to the European
Union in Brussels for concessions and try again to win parliamentary approval, but the bloc is unlikely to grant her any.
Some Cabinet members are pressing for a different course, calling for nonbinding “indicative votes,” in which members of Parliament can freely express their preferences for the various exit plans being bandied about.
The hope is that May’s plan might emerge from that process with the highest level of support.
Jeremy Corbyn, the opposition Labor Party leader, called the loss historic and said May’s “delay and denial” had led to disaster. “She cannot seriously believe after two years of failure she is capable of negotiating a good deal,” Corbyn said.
He then introduced a motion of no-confidence, to be debated and voted upon today.
Although May lacks an overall majority in Parliament, she looks likely to survive the vote unless lawmakers from her Conservative party rebel. Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party, which props up May’s government, said it would support her.
“The House has spoken and the government will listen,” May said after the vote.
She promised to consult lawmakers on future moves but gave little indication of
what she plans to do next. Parliament has given the government until Monday to come up with a new proposal.
Negotiating the withdrawal from the European Union has been May’s main focus since she became prime minister.
But the deal was doomed by deep opposition from both sides of the divide over U.K.’s place in the bloc. Anti-EU lawmakers say the deal will leave Britain bound indefinitely to EU rules, while proEU politicians favor an even closer economic relationship with Europe.
The most contentious section of the deal was an insurance policy known as the “backstop” designed to prevent the reintroduction of border controls between the U.K.’s Northern Ireland and EU member Ireland. Assurances from EU leaders that the backstop is intended as a temporary measure of last resort failed to win over many British skeptics.
With no consensus behind any one pathway, and a vanishing window for further negotiation, more radical solutions are rising to the fore.
One group of lawmakers is campaigning for a repeat referendum, which could overturn the mandate to leave, and another favors leaving the European Union on March 29 without a withdrawal agreement, a move that experts warn could lead to shortages of some foods and an economic downturn.
“This is probably the most important piece of legislation for decades, and the executive can’t get it through,” said Tim Stanley, a columnist for The Daily Telegraph. “It’s a very dramatic moment.”
During the vote, thousands of protesters, many in costumes, gathered outside Parliament.
Anti-EU protesters banged drums and rang a “liberty” bell, while pro-EU demonstrators handed out anti-exit stickers in Parliament Square beside two video screens set up for the live broadcast of the final speeches and the vote.
Jeff Wyatt, 54, an anti-EU voter, held aloft a placard that accused May of treason. Another man in the crowd suggested that the prime minister should face the executioner’s ax.
“For the first time in the history of my country, we’ve got Parliament against the people,” Wyatt said, gesturing at the Palace of Westminster.
Monika Wolf, 57, was clutching an EU flag and a Union Jack. She moved to Britain from Germany in 1981, and she studied and raised her children there.
In an ideal world, she said, Britain wouldn’t leave the EU. She hoped to see “more statesmanship from the big parties — they both talk about bringing the country together, but so far they haven’t done anything at all to make that happen.”
‘ORDER OR CHAOS’
May expected to lose the vote, having lost the support of many of her own lawmakers. But her surrogates scrambled, as late as Tuesday, to rally lawmakers to her side, in hopes of keeping the margin narrow enough to try again for parliamentary approval.
Earlier in the day, the attorney general, Geoffrey Cox, rebuked Parliament for contemplating a sudden and unregulated end to 45 years of integration with Europe.
Beseeching his fellow Conservative Party members to get behind May’s plan, Cox asked: “What are you playing at? What are you doing? You are not children in the playground. You are legislators, and it is your job. We are playing with people’s lives.”
He continued, “Do we opt for order? Or do we choose chaos?”
The environment secretary, Michael Gove, warned lawmakers that “if we don’t vote for this deal tonight, in the words of Jon Snow, winter is coming,” a reference to the Game of Thrones television show.
But critics of the deal were equally adamant, saying that May had emerged from two years of negotiations with an agreement that satisfied no one. Dominic Raab, who stepped down in November as May’s secretary of state for exiting the European Union, described her agreement as “wracked with self-doubt, defeatism and fear.”
“This deal before us can’t end the grinding process — it can only prolong it,” Raab said. “It would torment us and our European neighbors for the foreseeable future.”
After the vote, frustrated EU leaders called on May to make her intentions clear on the future of Britain’s departure from the EU.
“Now, it is time for the U.K. to tell us the next steps,” said Michel Barnier, the bloc’s chief negotiator.
European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker — who returned to Brussels late Tuesday to deal with fallout from the vote — said the rejection of May’s deal had increased “the risk of a disorderly withdrawal of the United Kingdom.”
“Time is almost up,” he said.
European Council President Donald Tusk highlighted the quagmire the U.K. had sunk into, and hinted that the best solution might be for Britain not to leave.
“If a deal is impossible, and no one wants no deal, then who will finally have the courage to say what the only positive solution is?” he tweeted.
Under normal circumstances, a British prime minister would be expected to resign after losing a vote on a flagship policy, but the withdrawal process has so unsettled political conventions that May could survive to make revisions and pitch her deal again.
In December, May survived a leadership challenge from within her own Conservative Party and, under its rules, is safe from another until the end of the year.
“We have been in extraordinary circumstances,” said Nikki da Costa, a former director of legal affairs at 10 Downing St. “Things that in normal times would not be considered survivable have become normalized. What the government would be looking for is a pathway through this.”
Da Costa predicted that “we will be doing this again in a couple of weeks’ time.”
May will now face pressure to allow Parliament to vote on options other than her plan, a fuzzy middle way that keeps different economic possibilities open for the future but also restores the power to control immigration within the European Union.
Alternatives include proposals to adhere more closely to the European Union’s economic rule book, by remaining in a customs union with the bloc, or going further and staying within its single market. But that would involve obeying more European rules, abandoning the idea of conducting an independent trade policy, and possibly allowing the free movement of European workers.
Most members of Parliament oppose the prospect of leaving the union without a deal on March 29, a disorderly and chaotic rupture that would do significant economic damage, so they may press for an extension of the negotiating period. European officials will be reluctant to grant that without any clear new strategy from the government, but they, too, want to avoid a “no deal” withdrawal.