May gambles running down Brexit clock will focus political minds
LONDON — Faced with a Brexit vote she can’t win, Theresa May appears to be gambling that running down the clock to a no-deal departure might change the arithmetic in Parliament.
Less than 24 hours after Environment Secretary Michael Gove insisted the vote on May’s Brexit deal would go ahead on Tuesday, it seemed likely to be at least a month away. Parliament goes on recess on Dec. 20 and won’t return until Jan. 7. Meanwhile, Britain leaves the European Union on March 29, with a deal or without one.
A cabinet ally of May’s, speaking on condition of anonymity, put the prime minister’s strategy more charitably, saying that if the deal can’t go through then the only option is to keep talking to EU leaders, in the hope they might offer something more, and to lawmakers, in the hope they might ask a little less.
With that in mind, May postponed her weekly cabinet meeting on Tuesday and will visit Mark Rutte in The Hague and Angela Merkel in Berlin.
On the issue of persuading members of Parliament, the minister said the prospect of the lower house voting on other options on Jan. 21 could serve to concentrate minds in the proBrexit wing of the party.
The likely majorities in Parliament are for staying close to the EU, or delaying departure. May’s message will be that the choice they face is between her Brexit or the risk of no Brexit.
The question is whether they will believe her. So many have now spoken out against the deal that it will be hard for them to back down, even if she can agree to changes with Brussels.
Liam Fox, a supporter both of Brexit and May, made the case to the BBC TV. “My greatest fear is not getting Brexit at all,” he told “Newsnight.” He argued that because there’s a majority against leaving the EU in Parliament there’s a danger “that we get stuck in some sort of limbo where we’re not actually able to leave the EU.”
May hopes there will be pressure on lawmakers over Christmas from voters anxious about a no-deal Brexit. That could help to shift some pro-EU lawmakers in her party, and maybe even some in Labour. But unless she can win a good chunk of the hardline Brexit wing of the Tories, she won’t have the votes she needs.
Jacob Rees-Mogg, chair of the pro-Brexit European Research Group, spoke for many rank-andfile Tories when he told reporters on Monday that May hadn’t avoided defeat, but conceded it.
“This deal has been defeated,” he said. “The prime minister said she was pulling the vote because the vote couldn’t be won.”
For all of her weakness, for all that her own side attacks her, it’s not clear they can work out how to get rid of her or who could deliver something better. Many of May’s problems result from the lack of a majority in Parliament, and any successor would have the same problem.