May suffers crushing defeat in Brexit vote
May loses Brexit vote by stunning 230 majority. Biggest government defeat in British history. Labour leader calls for vote of no confidence.
Prime Minister Theresa May suffered the worst defeat in British parliamentary history Tuesday night, plunging the country into an era of unprecedented uncertainty.
May’s “meaningful vote” on Brexit was lost by 230 votes — including a Tory rebellion of 118 MPs — and immediately sparked a motion from the Labour opposition of a vote of no confidence in her Conservative government. Seconds after the vote, May rose to her feet to say she would respect the will of the House, but also wondered whether it had a way forward. “It is clear that this House does not support this deal, but tonight’s vote tells us nothing about what it does support,” she said.
May promised to begin cross-party talks “in a constructive spirit”, but cautioned that proposals would have to be “genuinely negotiable and have sufficient support” if she was to take them back to Europe. She added: “Every day that passes without this issue being resolved means more uncertainty, more bitterness and more rancour.” With little hope of a compromise emerging imminently, May’s officials refused to rule out delaying Britain’s withdrawal from the EU as Brussels warned that “time is running out”. The Cabinet is understood to be split over the way forward, with Brexiteers warning that any attempt to reach a compromise with Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn would result in a “Brexit in name only”.
In the House of Commons after the vote, Corbyn said May’s “catastrophic” defeat represented an “absolutely decisive” verdict on her Brexit negotiations.
But May is on Wednesday expected to win the no confidence vote with the support of the same Tory MPs who rebelled on Tuesday.
Rob Ford, a professor of politics at Manchester University, stressed that these were strange times. “Normally, if you were looking at a defeat of 50-plus votes on the No. 1 item on the government’s agenda, then that would be it. Game over. The prime minister would be gone and the government would probably fall immediately. But that’s clearly not going to happen,” he said. “What Theresa May does now will become less and less relevant to what outcome we get. The key thing to be watching is what Parliament does next and what Labour does next,” Ford said. Government sources said that while May would now talk to senior Labour MPs, she had no plans to talk directly to Corbyn.
In a debate before the vote, May told MPs it was the “most significant vote that any of us will ever be part of in our political careers” and that their “historic decision” would affect the country for generations to come.
In the same debate, rising Labour Party star David Lammy recalled how he had confronted his constituents who sympathized with the violence carried out by rioters in London in 2011. Now he said he felt the same duty to confront his neighbours over Brexit.
“Why? Because we have a duty to tell our constituents the truth, even when they passionately disagree,” Lammy said. “Brexit is a con, a trick, a swindle, a fraud.” In another emotional speech, Geoffrey Cox, a Conservative lawmaker and the attorney general, urged the chamber to back May’s deal. “You are not children in the playground, you are legislators — we are playing with people’s lives,” Cox said. Arlene Foster, the leader of the Democratic Unionist Party — propping up May’s minority government — urged the prime minister to use the scale of the defeat as a “mandate” to force concessions from the EU, which is increasingly worried about a no-deal Brexit. European leaders Tuesday night issued a series of statements saying that it was up to Britain to come forward with new proposals. Emmanuel Macron, the French president, said that Britain may now ask for a delay to Brexit. Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European Commission, said, “I urge the United Kingdom to clarify its intentions as soon as possible. Time is almost up.” Donald Tusk, the president of the European Council, appeared to suggest Britain should abandon Brexit as he said, “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?”
May will have until Monday to come up with an alternative Brexit plan which would have to be put to a vote by the end of the month.